The House on Twin Birch Drive

When spring break of senior year finally arrived, I was ready for a break. A break from school, time to relax, and time alone excited me. I sat in a busy airport terminal drinking a Blue Moon, watching Severance, and looking around for people I knew. I saw no one I knew. I felt relieved. While most of my friends were spending their break under the rustling leaves of palm trees and being baked alive by the sun, I spent mine in a much more luxurious place: Cranston, Rhode Island. 

I went back home for a few reasons. I couldn’t really afford a Bahamas trip, I needed a break from being around people, and most importantly, because my mom was moving out of my childhood home.

Built-in 2011, the three-bedroom, three-bathroom colonial house has a beautiful red front door, and tons of cigarettes buried in the backyard. While I didn’t paint the door, I did bury the cigarettes. I contributed something!

It’s hard for me to feel attached to things sometimes. I throw most stuff away, claiming it’s junk (concert wristbands from three years ago will never be junk, however), and mostly wanted to be there for my mom, who I am very close with, and who I thought had more of an attachment to the house than I did. 

I got home and was tasked with moving desks, clothes and furniture. I sat in my room, my mom at work, my brother in Aruba, crying over my sophomore year “Class of 2021” shirt. I wiped my tears with it. I never cry. I don’t attach myself to things. I make a point not to attach myself to things.

I walked around the house crying and eating a bag of sour skittles. I can only eat a few sour skittles at a time because they make my tongue hurt.

I went into my mom’s office. I thought of the times I would sit in there and read, look at old photos, and bother my mom while she taught class on Zoom during COVID. I had my first kiss there. It was as awkward as any first kiss is supposed to be. I don’t know that person anymore, but I know the room we sat in, the couch we sat on, and the movie we watched in 2019. I felt sad. I wouldn’t know the room anymore either. 

I left the office. I stopped at a frame holding some vignettes that I had written in ninth grade and again in college. My mom made me write them by hand, so I changed some things around to make them better. I would still see these frames, but not on the same wall. The wall, I would never see again. 

I went into the living room, which was also the kitchen. It was one big room. I never liked it that way. Something more cozy or intimate would have been better. I thought about all the quesadillas and sandwiches I made there. They were the first things I cooked, and they are still the only things I know how to cook.

Eventually, I went into my bedroom again. I found my high school diploma, and a certificate that I got from a senator that I eventually worked for. I laid in bed and cried for a few minutes. It was longer than I had let myself cry in a while. It felt worth it, rewarding.

My mom cries about the house a lot more than I do, but it’s hard for me too. It’s hard to give up a place that I intentionally tried to be disconnected from. I associated it with hardship, separation, and holes put in walls. Despite this, the attachment came and so did tears. I felt good that I felt bad about leaving the house. It was what I avoided, but it was what I needed to feel at this moment. 

April 2025