Mocha With Linda hosts a weekly meme called Flashback Friday. She’ll post a question every Thursday, and then Friday we can link our answers up on her site.

The question for this week is about the home we grew up in:

Where did you live when you were growing up? In a house or an apartment? A mobile home or a duplex? Did your parents rent or own? Was it big or small? In a city, small town, or rural area? In the USA or another country? Did you have your own room or share with siblings? Did you have a say in how your room was painted/decorated? Did your folks update/redecorate periodically or was your house “stuck” in a certain decade? Did you have a yard? A swingset or other play areas? What was your neighborhood like? Were there lots of kids to play with? Did your family stay in one place or did you move? If so, how many times did you move by the time you graduated from high school? Did you like moving or long to stay in one place? Are your parents still in the home you grew up in (or at least the one you lived in when you graduated from high school) or did they move and you haven’t lived with them in their latest house? Does it feel like home? What were your favorite and least favorite things about your physical home? How similar or different is it to where you live now?

I’ve always loved the idea of the old family homestead, large enough for the whole brood, passed down through the generations, the house everyone comes home to.

We didn’t have that, however. We moved around quite a lot — every two years for a while. The only house I have any memory from my early childhood is my grandfather’s house. We lived with him for a while, then it seems we lived there by ourselves for a time, but I can’t remember the order of it all. I don’t remember how long we lived there. I don’t know if it was the house he shared with my grandmother or if he moved there after she passed away. I don’t really remember anything distinctive about the house itself except that it seems like it was a peachy color, and the bathroom connected my parent’s bedroom and my room. I do remember the address: if I am ever back in Corpus Christi, TX, I may drive by and see if it is still there.

But I do have some distinct memories from that house. Here are a few:

• My brother was born there. My mom had visited the doctor that day and had been told she was not ready to deliver yet. She didn’t have contractions in front, but had horrible back pain. I was four, and I remember being in my bedroom while she was in the bathroom when she shrieked for my father to come. He came and picked her up and carried her into their room — and they wouldn’t let me in! (Probably a good thing!) I remember lying on my bed wondering what was going on when my grandfather came in to check on me. Everything happened too fast for them to get to a hospital, but they did go after everything settled down. I did get to go in and see my mom and new little brother before they left.

• A couple of years later, my brother and I shared a bedroom with bunk beds. I had the top bunk, and the bottom of my bed wasn’t covered over, so my brother’s view from the lower bunk was of all the coils from the box springs of my bed (It’s amazing he didn’t get a finger stuck in there or something.) He often had very vivid dreams involving wild animals, so one night when he went to tell my parents that there was a snake in the box springs, they thought he was just dreaming. But he insisted, and they came to check — and there was a snake, by that time on my mattress near my head!!! Somehow they got our neighbor, Mrs. Beeson, over there to kill it: I remember her chopping its head off with an axe (after they somehow got it off the bed) and watching its mouth opening and closing and its body still slithering while disconnected from each other. Creepy! She said it was an egg snake (?) after eggs in the nest in my window (which I hadn’t noticed before) and it wouldn’t have hurt me. But it was still creepy.

• I don’t remember Mrs. Beeson’s face at all. She looked like she could have come from the Little House on the Prairie TV show set: she always wore a long skirt, blouse, and bonnet when she worked outside, which was a lot. I stayed with her for a few days while my mom was in the hospital after my brother’s birth. I don’t think she had a family of her own (at least not that lived with or near her), but there always seemed to be children at her house. She had a woody area behind her house where there was an old cabinet with various utensils and pans and pans, etc., and we all played back there making mud pies and such.

• I must have had an active imagination of my own, because I remember one night on my top bunk waking up and seeing a rounded shape right in front of me. Somehow I was convinced it was a headhunter, and if I just kept my eyes closed and pretended I was asleep, he wouldn’t bother me. So I tried, peeking every now and then to see if it was still there. I finally fell back asleep, and when I woke up, I saw that that rounded shape was the head of my teddy bear. 😳

So, even though I don’t remember the house itself, I have fond memories of our time there.

When I was in 9th or 10th grade, we lived in a small town with less than 200 people. There was no high school — we were bussed to the next town 10 miles away. I think there was one traffic light. Our house was “the house on the second hill.” The thing I loved about that house was that you could open windows on opposite sides of the house and get a lovely breeze through there.

When my mother left my father and we moved to Houston, we lived in a trailer for a few years. Then my mom and step-father had a house built in a new sub-division where they moved when I was in college and lived there ever since. My mom passed away almost five years ago, but my step-father still lives there. It is paid for now, and he wants to stay there until he passes on. Since I only lived there during breaks from college, I don’t have the feelings associated with the family home except that it was my mom’s house for so many years. I have fond memories from visits back there as well. What’s funny is that my three youngest sisters were very little when we moved there, so for them that is the old family homestead. Funny the different perspectives from the different age groups!