I stood in the doorway of my friend’s house. It was a very interesting house having an enclosed corridor to divide the house in an apartment kind of way. There were three related families living there at the time, just for the summer, and I was there a lot hanging out with my friend and her sisters, sleeping over. It was fun; my best summer back at home.



I love the coziness of that little dividing corridor of the peculiar house on a hill. The whole space was inviting because of its unusual position and design. As far as I know and can remember it was built by the owner. Right now I am facing the door that leads out into the living room with my back directly to the younger girls’ room, the older siblings’ room on my right and on the left the parents’ small bedroom was hiding behind its door. Through the glass door of the corridor I could see my friends’ cousins’ room door in the right corner and the living room stretching straight out and a part of it hiding behind the left corner. The bedrooms all are simple with just beds and trunk closets for clothes. There is a TV in the far corner of the living room and a love seat across from it. I push the corridor glass door and pass through the living room and smile at the sight that I get from the tall and wide window by the door leading out to the balcony that’s also the front entrance to this peculiar house. I stand there lingering by the window, remembering the days and the moments spent in this house. It’s not such a great sight, no fair prospect in view from this window, just the familiar concrete driveway going into the garage under the house, the familiar iron wrought black gate on top of the hill and the neighbors’ fruit garden in the distance. If I turn my head to the sides I see the vegetable and flower gardens spreading on either side of the driveway.



The view is not that great but the memory is so dear. I want to linger here. I want to walk through the now empty house and restore it, live it through again, make the laughter ring again and bounce off these walls and echo in the mountains enclosing the house, if only in my memory. I cannot bring my childhood years back. The memory would suffice -- now that I have the setting before my very eyes, now that I walk upon this ground, now that I touch these walls and doors, now that I smell the sea breeze and the garden flowers, now that the mountain fresh air enters my lungs I can live out the memory as easily as the reality comes. How can it fail now that I have all the resources? I just have the characters missing – the kids. Would the action take place without them? Would they be able to come alive through my memory? Was it strong enough to endure ten years of waiting? I have to try and see for myself. So here I go out the front door and into the hot pavement of the driveway. I’ll see where the wind would take me, hoping it will lead me to my friends.