"In The Days of My Youth" by Richie G

      In the days of my youth the doors at home were always open. The grass was always green, the flowers were always in bloom, and the fence was always pearly white. The shingles were in perfect order, the chimney stack was as red as the fires that burned in it, and our mailbox stood perfectly erect on it's pole with a perfect paint job and not a dent in it. It was when I turned ten, maybe eleven, when I realized the diet stained out windows, most of the grass was a slight yellow, and we hadn't even planted any of the flowers I adored as a child for a few years. There were bricks missing from the chimney, crooked shingles and a few dents in the mailbox that I hadn't noticed before. When I left at 17 to attend college in a land far away, I noticed that the lawn was completely and utterly decimated, as if it had been salted by the Romans. The mailbox was on the ground, no longer attached to a pole. The fence was brown now, none of the white gleam I remember there. The chimney had collapsed entirely, leaving an exposed hole into our living room where I had enjoyed many cold nights by the fire with my family. With my last glance around at what had once been my favorite place to play in my childhood, I said my goodbyes to my mom, dad, brother, and went away to college. After my 10 years of schooling, a doctorate of neurological science and a surgery license in my hand, I avoided going home. I always invited them to stay with me but I didn't go back. More years past, how many, I do not know, as I have stopped counting. I'm at the top of my game; I make more than every member of my family combined, I see them enough to feel alright with never returning home. My wife and kids are content with the stately manor that occupies some estate in the north of the state, and I couldn't be happier. But then I got a letter, from my brother whom I confess had grown away from me over the years, which stated the house had collapsed. Our parents had not been home, but it was utterly destroyed by the high winds of the season. I returned to the house, which say on on the south side of the country, and examined the old house. But looking at it, I didn't see the collapsing prison of my youth, or even the destroyed structure before me. I saw it as I had as a young boy who played in the yard, sat on the soft green grass and had no worries. Maybe it hadn't really changed so drastically over the years. Maybe it had been only in my head, to justify leaving the safety it had provided me as a child. Whatever the case, I love it all the same, and it will always be the house I remember from the days of my youth.