A letter from Sep 01, 2023

Dear Future Skyler, I just saw a post on Instagram that showed a note someone wrote to the owners of the house they used to live in and the thought of writing my own letter to the people who live in my old house made my cry instantly and I don't think I have the guts to actually write a letter out and drop it off, I do want to type it out anyway. To the people living in my old house on Locust St. : My family used to live here here when I was younger. I lived here from when I was born to age six. I hope you love the house as much as I do looking back. My perspective is a little skewed because I was so young. I know the house can be a little cramped and it's not perfect, but I have so many great memories there. The bedroom in the second floor across from the bathroom used to be my dad's office. I shared the bedroom the the immediate right up the stairs with my older brother until that room was converted. I think I was 3 or 4 when that happened and some of my earliest memories are of hanging out with my brother in our room, watching my dad move things from my new room to his new office in the basement, and playing in my room. I remember absolutely loving the color I had picked out. It was a light green color that reminded me of Tinkerbell. It's closer to the color of Tinkerbell's dress from the 1953, not the newer animated movies. One time my parents woke up in the middle of the night and found an opossum in their closet. My brother woke up as well and he got to watch as they took it to the garage. I can't remember if they let it go then and there or if my dad had placed it into a trap and let it go in the morning. I just remember being jealous that I really only got to see pictures of it. We had a total of three cats in that house, not all at the same time. The first cat we had was a black and white cat named Mustache. Mustache was a feral cat the lived by my mom's old workplace in San Francisco. My parents met there and then moved to Somerville, they lived there for maybe 5 years, had my brother, and then moved to Locust street. Mustache is buried in the backyard where there used to be a lilac tree. The bathroom off of the kitchen downstairs used to be a pantry. We redid the kitchen, too. When I was really young I used to sit in the room off of the living room and watch tv on the couch every morning and eat an apple. Instead of throwing the apple away, I would just put it behind the tv. My mother found out about this of course and she would dispose of them for me. She never reprimanded me for it which I don't understand, but it's a story we both love to tell. The second cat we had at the house was Giuseppe. He was a black and white tuxedo cat. He had a huge personality. We got him when I was five and he passed away during my senior year of highschool in 2022. Giuseppe and I had quite a tumultuous relationship when we lived there. I didn't understand the concept of respecting his boundaries yet, which is strange because I was good with Mustache ( you couldn't pick her up and could only pet her in particular spots ). I would shove Seppie in my baby carriage and put the blanket on top of him. Things like that made him very upset and he took his anger out on me later by cornering me in the living room right at the front door. He would get in a playful, vengeant mood which I didn't know how to combat at the time. Once he had me in the corner he would pounce on my head and I would scream for my parents to help me. He would always do it when I was alone in the room though, smart cat. He wouldn't hurt me all that much. I got a handful of scratches or small bites, but our relationship changed and grew so much throughout his thirteen years and we were best friends. I don't remember exactly how old I was when this incident happened, but I once shut Seppie's tail in the front door. There was a trail of blood from upstairs going down into the basement which my brother found and he obviously started getting very scared and worried for our cat. Once we figured out what happened, we found fur in the door and took him to the vet where the end of his tail was amputated. His tail was still pretty normal length after, but I do feel bad for putting him through the ringer when I was younger. The third cat we had at the house is named Joe Bee, but we call her Joejoe. I got her for my seventh birthday in 2010. She was named after a scarecrow I had made in class which I also named after Jovie from the movie Elf. Joejoe once peed on my pink beanbag chair in my room and I was very upset. I was so excited to show her off to the twin boys next door. They were a year older than me growing up and I was great memories of playing in my backyard and their backyard. We used to go around the corner of the patio and go through the bottom of the fence over there, but one of the boys always got his head stuck. One time I was hanging out with the boys and we decided to go down my driveway in my wagon. We barely all fit. It felt like it was going so fast. We ended up tipping over and we all rolled over each other. One of the boys actually ended up falling on top of me and still complained about it (the same one whose head got stuck). I used to walk around the backyard with my brother and turn over rocks, looking for worms, grubs, and ants. We grew sunflowers in the garden one year and I was amazed by how tall and how big they could get. I used to swing on our swing set as high as I could and antagonize the small dogs the lived over the fence. My brother and I had water balloons once and we were tossing them back and forth between each other. Being the older brother he is, he would do his best to toss it at me trying to get it to pop on me. Being the younger sister that I was I would tell him he did a good job throwing it, carefully pick it up, walk it over to him, barely being able to call it a toss. One time I got stung by a bee in the backyard. It only happened once and I had just happened to step on it. I learned how to ride my bike outside that house. Once time I was riding my bike on the street with my dad and brother, they were both behind me. I still wasn't completely confident with my abilities on only two wheels, but I was also excited that I was actually doing it. I looked back at my dad smiling and I remember hearing him yell at me not to look back and to look forward. I ended up crashing my bike right when I turned my head around by hitting the curb and twisting the handlebars. I remember my dad rushing to me to make sure I was ok. I think I scraped my arm or leg, and even though I hurt myself, it's such a fond memory I have. I have another memory of sitting in my mom's old red Volvo in the driveway, ready to go somewhere. I was all strapped in my seat and we thought we were good to go, but the car door on my side wasn't closed and it caught on the fence as she backed up, making a bad noise. This is only a good memory for me because I was a child and I didn't have to deal with any of the headache that comes along with that, which I'm glad for. The front yard used to look different, too. I think it was just a plain front yard with some bushes before we changed it up. My uncle had his own lawncare business he he helped us out. I remember taking trips to the plant nurseries to pick out plants for the front yard. we ended up laying down new grass, a new walkway from the side of the driveway and the front sidewalk, putting a raised garden bed by the stairs, and planting a small birch tree. The bushes we planted in the garden bed had spherical bushed leaves at the end of the branches, making it look like something out of a Dr. Seuss book. I loved walking into town with my family on a random weekday evening and grabbing pizza. The schools were so close, my brother and I would walk together and I feel like the path of the sidewalk down the hill is still etched into my brain. There used to be a maple tree between the street and the sidewalk. We tried tapping it for syrup once and we made very little. I remember being very impatient during that process and my dad reprimanding me. I was very sad when the tree was taken down. I used to watch my brother burn ants with his magnifying glass in the driveway. I think I also got shooed away from him once with pebbles in a slingshot. That was around the time when he thought he was too cool and old to hang out with me and the twin boys next door anymore. Sorry to go on about things like my cats which you might not care all that much about, but I wanted to say something. It felt good to get that all out. I think there have been a few homeowner of that house since I've moved and I can only hope that they've made great memories there like I have. the owners before my family were a family of 7 or 8. I have no idea how they all fit, but they made it work. I remember my parents commenting on how they had to patch up fist-holes in the walls when they moved in. We gave that house a lot of love, I have a lot of love for it still, and I hope it still gets love from its family.