Cambridge Drive

A lot of people didn't get the pleasure of growing up in the same house for a long period of time. Some children moving from town or state with their families. Maybe even out of the country, never staying in the same place for long. Weather it be due to the parents career, or maybe other family members had made a move, so the rest followed. All of those people had their reasons. My parents had their reasons too. We stayed put in the same house for the most part of the first eight to nine years of my childhood.

Cambridge Drive.

Cambridge Drive was truly a wonderful and nostalgic time of my life.

Memories derived from within that household, and because of it, that wouldn't have been the same anywhere else. My parents got me my first, and what ended up being my only, childhood dog in that house. I learned to ride a bike out front in the street. I learned to fly a kite in the backyard in front of the swamp behind that house. I also learned how to swim across the street in Harold and Shirleys pool. I'm glad I met neighbors like them so young, or I wouldn't believe that good neighbors exist.

My dad built a two story shed out back of that house. He taught me how to use a hammer and level in the making of that shed. Then him and his brothers taught my cousins and I how to play Risk upstairs. I drove an air boat for the first time with my dad and Doug in the swamp behind that house. My dad taught me how to handle and shoot a gun outside that house, and ultimately taught me how to hunt in the surrounding woods.

I caught my first snake in the swamp behind us, plus some. We had turkeys, ducks, a rooster, and rabbits in the yard. My mom showed me how she cared for all of them. I watched my mother in the backyard, for the only time yet with my own eyes, wield a shotgun at a bobcat that was getting her favorite duck, because contrary to popular belief, my sweet little mama does not play. We lost our white cat named Buddy in that house. I grew up with him and my mom had him for nineteen or twenty years.

All of the memories weren't what you would call fond, but they were a part of life and they needed to be there.

I experienced the first seizure I had ever seen my mother have in that home. I learned quickly how to respond to someone having one, and what to do. I witnessed my first ever, "family" throw down in that house, which resulted in us gaining some chosen family for quite some time.

And it wasn't our first, but the first one I was old enough to remember. A family friend accidentally caught our front car port on fire, resulting in a good portion of our home being highly damaged. My parents had worked very hard together for the house on Cambridge, and even harder establishing there as a family. Our family friend felt horrible. He was my dads best friend, and he was devastated that he had altered my dads hard work in such a way. I saw my dad cry for the first and only time that day, next door to that house, on preacher man and preacher ladys couch. The home his wife and daughter lived in was disheveled for the time being, so he was worried about an immediate way to provide for his family.

That is all my dad really cared about. I also watched the same family friend, and a good handful of others, come religiously rebuild our home. Side by side with my father. I learned then, that there truly are people you can depend on.

I got to see my mom graduate college when we lived in that house. My parents fostered one of my cousins, and housed many others over the years in that home. Every dinner we ate in that house, we ate together. I made my first friends on the block that house was on. Built my first bike ramps and learned how to roller blade with my mom at that house.

My dad and my mom, and my cousins, and my aunts and uncles, and my grandparents, and all of our close family friends, we put so much love into that house, and for many years, that house loved us back.

This isn't actually about the house, or Cambridge Drive.