House of Memory
1. The house of no memory.
2. The house with a farm in front and woods in the back, where I said my first swear, Amber got her stomach pumped after eating the berries, and Paige came home for the first time.
3. The house with lots of grasshoppers where we picked wild roses and made perfume in jars from the petals and water from the hose.
4. The house where our friends lived before us, and where my Dad stayed on for years after we left; an alternate growing up place.
5. The house of frostbite at the bus stop, of laying on the floor after the shooting across the road, of riding to the ball-park on my friend’s handlebars, and of the Robin Hood obsession.
6. The house that wasn’t our house; the house of sunshine lies and foreshadowing.
7. The house that also wasn’t our house; the house of alienation.
8. The house of rain on the north coast, where we acquired Samantha, took our pocket money to the corner store, and began roaming the streets freely and our feet were always wet.
9. The house of cacti and grassfires, of independence and reunion, a bully, a bullet, a falling down, and an onslaught of suburban horror.
10. The house where I did grow up, where I saw her face see the northern lights for the first time, where tears and candles and ghosts took up so much space, where I talked on the phone all night, danced and danced and danced and lounged poolside with three BFFs, where a lifetime of long walks commenced and I discovered I really could would wander all day, where art, creativity and craft happened, where boys and longing happened, where I painted the walls with my dreams and imagined a thousand tiny deaths.
11. The house of the trucker and his mail-order bride, where I rented a room and filled it with my car-load of belongings, where Matthew kissed me for the first time and I replied that he would never get rid of me now which was one true thing.
12. The house of empty liquor bottles for decor and college roommates and their boyfriends and a million strangers traipsing through and snorting rails off my dresser and punching holes in the walls and barfing everywhere and where I’m fairly certain I saw an angel.
13. The house where I lived alone and sipped a lot of tea while sitting on the couch on the back porch overlooking the river, and where I met God, who had always been there but I hadn’t ever noticed before.
14. The house where I gained a new family, ate a lot of whipped cream, and discovered what men were like.
15. The house that was my Mother’s where the wedding planning happened.
16. The house where we came home early from our honeymoon because of the rain but didn’t tell anyone and we set up house by draping fabric over upturned boxes for end tables and and I chopped off all my hair and we prayed together every bedtime.
17. The house above it all in the prairie city that had the longest coldest nights, where we rode our bikes up the elevator, hitched a ride with the old folks early to church, where I got locked out for hours and hours while he searched for me and where I made a true forever-friend.
18. The house that was a basement where Adora began to grow.
19. The house of going home that also was a basement with a butter yellow kitchen where I bathed the baby in the sink and became a mother for the first time and a daughter all over again.
20. The house of simplicity and neighbourliness and happy times where we should have stayed but didn’t.
21. The house we dubbed the party mansion, where Grace made us four, where I screamed with my own voice and made my first definite decision instead of just going along with things.
22. The house where my feet became roots by a river and my heart opened into a big sky, where I was given a new name and I became alive, and where in the end I was punished for it.
23. The house of a hundred new beginnings that we could finally call ours, that we gutted and remade, where the kids ran in the green grass and the kitten eyeballed the fish and pounced on our socked feet and climbed the Christmas tree, and where I began walking in the deep dark and developed night-vision.
24. The house I could have stayed in forever, minus that damn driveway.
25. The house that was a strange returning, that was a loss disguised as a gain, that was a burden lifted for one friend and a place of heartache for another, that was big and quiet except for all those parties, that was a perch on a hill from which I watched the birds dance in their strange undulations, where I listened, and waited, and from where we suddenly leapt into a bigger world.
26. And here: the house near the water where I gave up settling down and have found myself feeling finally at home.
Danka Remade 
There are a lot of stories in those houses! Would love to hear more! I’m so glad your house experiences have ended up with you at home!
Wow. This is kind of awesome. xoxo