Thoughts on a small house

The house I grew up in. Three bedrooms, two baths (now three). The carport is new(ish) and what is now my Dad's tv room used to be a screen porch. I suppose saying a "screened-in" porch would be more correct, but we always said screen porch.

It's a small house, but very nice. Nicer now, my parents put on a fabulous deck and then there is the matter of that tv room and the new combination bathroom/laundry room.

The truck is my Dad's (A Man Has to Have a Truck) and the car is nominally my Mom's. Right there in the lower left corner of the picture where all that liriope is growing there used to be a huge holly bush. Once every year or so Mom would get out and hack it back to a stump and then it would grow until it became a danger to people getting out of the car there. Not sure if it died of natural causes or was removed, but it makes the driveway look a lot more open.

The Japanese Magnolia sticking up from behind the truck always buds out too early. The slightest hint of warm weather and it forms buds. Two years out of three there is then a big frost and the stupid thing is blighted.

I enjoy going to visit my parents there, but it's strange how the house doesn't match up to my ideas and memories of it. So much that I remember is gone and the house is changed. And I am changed. And the house of my childhood is alive only in my memory. But that's okay, because it is alive there, and then there is this nice little house for my parents to live in...and for me to visit.