The house is dead now.  But it used to thrive.  Almost everyday everyone would meet at my Nana and Grampy’s house in Everett.  Cousins, aunts, and uncles would pull into the one-car-width driveway with a set plan on who has to leave first in order to prevent someone from getting blocked in.  We sneaked between the car mirrors and the neighbors house like spies until we reached my Nana’s small backyard where the vines encased the fence and the apple tree grew and grew in order to support the amount of pies we ate.  The house was a two-family house but that’s not a fit name for it.  Anyone who ever lived there was a relative of my Nana.  We owned that house.  We made it breath. 

The first step in was as if you were in Italy or a bakery or a candy shop.  The smell of pasta, sauce, and pie exploded onto your nose and your mouth watered to put the fire out.  The kitchen was the gathering place.  For decades the generations of my family met there, hovering around the stove and getting yelled at for sneaking food like bandits getting caught by the police.  To go down to the basement was like reaching the jackpot.  Gramps never wanted us down there but when my cousins and I managed to fall into the cranky, tired steps, the treasures that filled the dark, dusty cement floor were always a surprise.  We probably reached that level only twice every year.  The attic however, was a hangout.  Just as dangerous as the basement as we jumped on the mini trampoline wondering how long it would take to break through the weak, wooden floor.  Nana would bang on the heater pipe downstairs and the sound that cascaded up to us like a balloon in a tree brought us downstairs for the dinner we had been anticipating.  My eleven cousins, siblings and I would scramble down the tattered and tight attic steps down to the second floor, where we would wave to Nanny, and then trample down the steep, metal stairs.  At least one of us would smash our head off the wooden overhang.  If it was an accident it was usually Mark.  If it was on purpose it was usually Mark.  He liked to make me laugh.

Dinner was always wonderful and filled with laughs and spills.  Once we were finished we would all beg our parents to allow us to sleep over.  My Nana would beg too.  We would get into our regular beds and stay up to watch movies and throw water bottles at each others heads waiting for my Nana to come in and tell us to knock it off.  She could never stop us.

In the morning we would awake to the smell of eggs, bacon, and toast at the “Sunshine Café”, the cheesy name for the imaginary restaurant we thought up.  My nana would try to do my hair but then pass my tangled birds nest onto one of my cousins as we all got ready for the walk to church.  The routine was always the same.  The love was always the same.  The memories however, always seemed to change.

But now the house is dead.  At the funeral we marked boxes and gazed through old pictures.  A new family lives in the house on West Street but it’s not an uncle, aunt, or cousin.  Now the routine is different but the love and memories continue.  We managed to pack the soul of the house into one of the boxes.