I meditate for 15 minutes before bed every night. I have these ridiculous goggles I put over my head that massage my temples, plays some barely audible spa musak. I mostly listen to the gyrations of the little electric gears compressing and humming on my face. Aesthetically I look like an idiot. Mentally I’m at so much peace that aesthetics < mental health.

I can somewhat self hypnotize myself when I get locked into a memory mode. I can pick and choose a certain era in my adolescence and or childhood, slow my breathing down and I’m there. I will float along these memory lanes and lie in my bed with a giant smile on my face, sometimes there will be tears of joy running along the sides of the goggles from an old memory usually involving my mother, father or my 100 siblings that used our family homes as revolving door hotels.

Our old home in Piedmont on 86 was my base from 8 to 18. 17 actually is when I first moved out but I came back briefly before I moved to Colorado for a few. I too used that home as a revolving door at times. In between breakups and DUIs mom and my stepfather Tom always welcomed the kids home when they broke. We’d come back home to heal and once we felt it was safe to go back out we did. Sometimes without saying goodbye, other times with a boot in our ass when we wore out our welcome. This was my home. I have the most memories from that old bungalow.

In the early years most older homes like these didn’t have central air conditioning or a furnace. It wasn’t unusual to sleep on top of the covers without turning down your quilt. We had quilts, usually handmade to sleep on. No comforters, duvets, high sheet thread counts or any of that fancy shit. Cold winter nights you got two of em. Or a throw blanket that someone got for Christmas. Summer nights we’d sleep with the windows open. If I was lucky I’d have a box fan to pull some of the cooler muggy night air into my room. Fans were louder then. Not in a good way. They were heavier with metal and would shake and clatter as opposed to hum. The blade for some reason would work its way closer and closer to the fan guard and one occasion would clip the fan. Just enough to never allow you to relax. Almost like a smoke detector with a weak battery. I’ve always said Gen X started the sleeping with the fan of phase out of necessity and passed it down. I’m not sure if I slept fine during the hot summer months due to acclimation or to the hot southern nights. The first summer I didnt have a fan. I could hear the old peacocks crooning a quarter mile down the road at the old Agnew house. When I first heard them I used to think it was a young girl crying for help.

Usually the air was tolerable by the time I went to bed. I recall many a daytime of reading on our old sectional and when I’d get up my shirt would be stuck to my back. I can’t see my daughter enjoying a home in August without central air. Somehow I managed.

Winters would be heated with an old gas stove that sat in our hallway of the house. This thing was about the size of a semi engine block. It took up 50% of the hallway. Wasn’t much of a hallway, it was a small square shaped room that functioned as the hub of the home. Small, windowless with 4 doors on each side. With the doors open you could do a little 360° curtsy and tour the whole home. Parent’s bedroom on the left, 7×7 bathroom straight ahead, my bedroom (mostly) on the right and the living room/great room/kitchen is sitting right behind you. To make the hallway even smaller my mother would put a little vanity table across with a mirrorfrom that heating engine block. It was the backup bathroom vanity. It was needed because at times with all the chickens came home to roost (my siblings) that one little bathroom would get congested. Sisters would yell at you when they were running behind and needed to blow dry their hair and you’re trying to finish the newest comic book release of the X-Men (they were fighting the Brood at the time, it was intense) while doing your business on the only squatting piece of porcelain in the house. No interior doors locked in this house. Privacy was a dare.

My brothers would always fuck with me and walk in the bathroom when I was doing my business and I hated it. They’d turn to leave and carefully leave the door open just wide enough for it slowly open on its own. It was like a Perfection timer ticking slowly until my bare ass popped off the toilet to close it before anyone could see me. It didn’t help that you could see the bathroom toilet as soon as you walked in the house.

Thanks bungalow architecture.

That little joke stuck with me over the years. I won’t use the public toilet if there isnt a stall. I don’t care if the door has a lock. I won’t go.

That little makeshift vanity would be cluttered with varied hair brushes., The brothers all shared one, sisters all had their individual, personalized brushes that rolled, frizzed and picked at their humongous 80’s hairsprayed ‘dos. Vidal Sassoon mouses, sprays, conditioners, moisturizers cans splayed around the top of the counter like they were knocked over by a bean bag at the fair. During holidays or untimely divorces you have up to 8 of us in that house at one time. Neither my mother or Tom drank which surprised me considering the shit we could put those poor folk through. If the population got too big for two bedrooms we went to bungalow 3.0 which meant turning the mud room into a bedroom. Cold ass concrete floor with old chipped black and white tile. Coldest and hottest room in the house. It wasn’t insulated I guess that’s why it was a mud room. Didn’t need a fan for background noise. Behind the wall of the bed was our laundry room. I never walked in that room when the washer or dryer wasn’t running. If we all convened at the same time which we did one winter we’d pull the old camper from the back yard and hook an extension cord up to the house. My brothers and I would stay in that little camper. I got the little loft bunk. We’d sleep with a little space heater that wouldn’t heat more than 12 square feet of that camper. I would shiver all night regardless of how many homemade quilts you stacked on top of me.

School mornings my mom would drag my ass out of bed on cold winter mornings and I’d walk out with my quilt and lay down in front of the furnace to warm up. Peggy would always fix me pillsbury cinnamon rolls for breakfast and we’d eat the whole damn tube. My wife buys them for thanksgiving and Christmas morning and when I smell them it immediately takes me to that warm little pad in front of the heater in Piedmont and I smile. I started to get chubby in 7th grade and those cinnamon rolls would be put away in storage for a bit.

Peggy loved to rearrange furniture. Not seasonally, not monthly it was daily. So mom spent a lot of time by herself when I went to school. She didn’t work often except for working as a receptionist at a hair salon in dt Piedmont for about a year. She left stating the women there were too gossipy but I think that’s why she went to work there in the first place. She’d get bored and move things around. Sometimes it was something barely noticeable like the coffee table would move on its axis and face north for the day. Sometimes I’d come home from school and the dining room would be in the living room. There was no sneaking in late from a party in my house. You didnt know what fixture labyrinth was laid out in front of you when you returned home. My mother had to the ability to conjure up a dining room table the size of a four door Cadillac within two hours of my departing the house for a high school football game. I’d come home 3 minutes past curfew and reckon with one piece of sectional sofa that my mother decided looked better nestling up three inches away from the front door. When I did my chores I knew better than to sweep anything under anything because anything could have a new location at any moment. One of my cousins left his Playboys in my bedroom one summer so I hid them under the rug that rested under my bed. Next day my bedroom had been rearranged and those playboys were no longer there. I never asked what happened to them. As far as I’m concerned they were never there..

Sometimes she’d take our only TV and move it to her bedroom when Tom was working out of town. We’d lie on her bed and watch A-Team, Remington Steele, Matt Houston (my mom loved Lee Horsley). We loved the Cosby Show and we’d watch old westerns together. Not that spaghetti shit I mean Eastwood, The Duke, McQueen. I was surrounded my Louis L’amour literature every where. That’s where my love for westerns came from. I’d pop some corn, shaking the pan over the eclectric coils, careful not to burn the kernels and melt butter on top. I’d pour my mother and I each glass of milk and we’d sit in front of that tv until it was time for bed. I cherish these moments with all my heart. My daughter and I will watch Marvel movies, play cards and eat pizza when Jess is out of town. God I hope she looks back at these as I do.

I never had a chance to enjoy them. Did I mention none of the doors locked in my house? I miss my big bedroom when it was just my mother and I. Those rooms were probably 15×17 at least. I had my 8 track stereo and weight bench in that room with plenty of extra room for activities. I’d listen to Prince 1999 on 8 track by my bed and I’d wake up when the track would pop out to flip over. My bedroom floor would be littered with X-men comics, Elf Quest graphic novels and David Eddings books. Winter months I’d stay in that room all day. Summers I’d explore the woods and pastures behind my home. We had a big ass yard I’d cut with a push mover. It would take 14 hours to cut. If I did a piss poor job my stepfather would make me go out the next day and make me do it all over again. He’d lift up low lying branches of the trees that marked our property to see if I pushed the mower all the way up to the trunk. I rarely did unless he was home. The side yard used to be tilled for gardening so I’d bottom out on those humps and while pushed the mower and it would stall. It was as an old mower and I’d pull on the starter handle over and over until my hands bled to get it started again. At the age of 11 I could take a lawn mower apart and put it back together again. Not sure what happened to that mechanical capability. I can even change oil on my truck now.

I can remember a thousand summer memories but only a handful of winter ones from that house unless it was a holiday. I hated school and pushed most of it out of my mind and there wasn’t much to do in the winter months in Piedmont. Summers I’d have that little camper hooked up by a 100 feet of extension cord and I’d camp in that little trailer. I’d bomb it with bug spray every year to kill any and every little bug that made it home during the off season and then set up camp there all summer. I’d have filled with books and we had several “barn” cats that weren’t feral and I’d grab a handful of them to hang with me at night in the camper. I loved the solitude of that little camper. When it rained I’d place cups all over the floor to catch the leaks from the old roof. I’d end up putting a tarp over it the last year when it was falling apart. My mom would wake me up by turning the power off so I’d get up and eat breakfast. I pleaded with my parents to get another camper when it finally went to shit. Loved that camper. Easy to see it left a lifetime impression on me. So did the cats seeing as I’m a cat person now. We had dogs too. My first family dog Beau was a black lab mix. I loved that dog. He was a damn car chaser when we let him out. I watched him chase towards a white van and get run over, I can vividly recall seeing the van’s back tires leave the road when it hit him. I screamed and ran for the road. He was already gone but his tail was still wagging at the very tip. I dragged him off the road by that tail crying. There was an older couple coming over the top of the road as I was pulling off into the ditch. That poor woman saw my dilemma and covered her mouth with her hand as tears rolled down her face. They kept driving though..

I was by myself not sure where my mom was but I spent the morning digging a hole in the woods to bury my dog. I stayed by the hole with my dog in a trash bag without covering it for about an hour. He might not have been dead or so I hoped. He might come back to life. I still believed in miracles in 6th grade. We know how this ended. No miracles were to happen that day.

That closed the book on my love for dogs. We’ve had some since that day and I love the whiny shit head we have now. She’s an awesome companion I just refuse to get close to her. Dogs should last forever. Or at least longer than we get with them.

Cats are different. They’re independent. I don’t have to get close to them. In fact they prefer for me not to. We are similar in that regard.

My mom liked toy dogs too. We lived 30 yards from essentially a drag strip of highway where vehicles could be clocked going over 90 mph. I got my parents old Pontiac Lemans up to 115 on that stretch one time. That half mile of highway was a death trap for our pets. We’d bury at least 4 dogs due to that road. Can’t tell you how many cats. Or they just wouldn’t come home to eat anymore. We had one cat that we never named because they wouldn’t last that long but he made it 9 years. That cat looked like it was going to die at any moment for years but he kept fucking ticking. I think I called him Sylvester because of his markings similar to Sylvester the cat.

I miss that old house. It’s no longer a house now it’s an office for a storage center now. I’ll rarely drive by it now it’s sad to see those memories asphalted and surrounded by cold storage roll up doors where I used to practice kicking footballs between Tom’s old Comets that sat covered in weeds. He wouldn’t make me mow under those. Brush was too thick. But I had my field goals backed up to 40 yards. I was dreaming of kicking for the Falcons while doing high fives with Billy “White Shoes” Johnson, my favorite player at the time. I bet I could still kick a 30 yarder if called upon.

That home will always be THE childhood one for me. Belle Mead had me for the first 6 years but memories don’t hold as much as the bungalow. I’ll be curious as to the memories my daughter will recall while she’s my age about her childhood home. Or if it’ll be divided like mine. At least when she reads this she’ll get a small vision of mine which is why I write these memories. When I fully encapsulated in my memories I can smell those cinnamon rolls, the petroleum form the furnace. I can hear my mother singing Dolly and Kenny playing on the old Victrola while hand washing dishes after breakfast. It’s fun to see how old childhood memories become so important to our daily routines now. I love music playing in my home on a record player during the day. I’ll clean to it or just sit on the sofa listening to the same albums listening to my mother sing. Man she had a voice. Her old southern Alabama accent and old adages were so unique. No one talks like that anymore. I still use some of them to this day. Thanks mom. No I really mean that.

My mother’s passing anniversary popped up last week and I was so enthralled by the Masters of Air series that I didn’t have a chance to honor it. She’s been on my mind this week and that house always exuded my mother. Without realizing it my mother’s memory and spirit was talking to me through that old bungalow.

It felt good to write this.