Sometimes I still accidentally refer to my parents’ house as home.

I’ve been out of the house, more or less, for a decade but it’s an easy mistake. They still live in the same awesome, 100-year-old house I grew up in. Its silhouette has changed over the years, trees have grown up and come down, and it’s recently been painted yellow, but it’s still the same house I was brought home to as an infant. It provided the setting for all of my childhood dramas, games and fantasy. I spent hours in the backyard. I used to look out my window at the hills opposite and imagine the kingdoms that lay beyond them. (I was disappointed to learn that the hills were only hiding Waterbury.)

I know where everything in this house is, and a lot of the things I used to think of as mine are still here – the mural on my old bedroom wall, the painted rock that serves as a doorstop, the shelves on which my international doll collection used to sit – but recently something’s changed. Read more