The House Where Stories Live

Does this happen to you?

I open a new book and begin to read. As the storyline begins to take shape in my mind, the house where the characters reside transforms into my childhood home. No matter the book, I subconsciously manifest the rooms of the blue colonial where I lived until I was seven; the house at 2424 Renny Court, Marietta, Georgia becomes the setting of the story.

Unless the author’s details take me to some green gabled home or quaint seaside cottage, my mind automatically wanders to the cul-de-sac where my sisters and I roller skated and formed spontaneous parades with the neighborhood kids. I see the house with its tall white columns, brick front steps, the flowering dogwood tree. I picture stepping through the front door where the stairs go down to a rec room, the dark brown carpet littered with toys, or up to a cozy family room where we watched Scooby Doo on our new color TV. The living room, with its pink velvety armchairs, streams with sunlight, and I think of the Christmas my stuffed gorilla was waiting there under the tree. I envision the kitchen with its mushroom wallpaper and a bone white table, and I remember my grandfather introducing me to yellow mustard, the color of the upholstered chairs. To the left of the stairs is the hallway that leads to our bedrooms — the one I shared with my sister, with twin beds and handmade green floral curtains; my twin sisters’ room, which I can barely recollect; my parents’ room, where we found the adoption dolls my mother made peeking from under the covers.

In the backyard is the elaborate wooden playset my father built, complete with balance beam, monkey bars, swings, and a slide. An overgrown circle of trees on the border of the yard forms a secret hideout beneath its needles. A little hill on the back edge of the yard is just right for sledding the few times it snows. Up beyond the hill is the high school where we once flew in a hot air balloon tethered to a truck and from which the sound of marching band drums rolled into my dreams.

It is the house where my imagination was born from the magical stories conceived by my parents and my creativity sprouted from playing make-believe with my sisters. My love of books grew as I sat on the couch, resting my cheek on my mother’s shoulder and listening to her read. It is the place where my first friendships were formed and my earliest memories are held.

Now, those memories, once vivid and rich, are vague and sparse, but they are conjured in the stories I read — and reincarnated in the novel I write. When my protagonist remembers learning to ride her bike, I envision the street where my father held the back of my yellow banana seat as I pedaled without training wheels. When she comes home soaked with rain, her mother meets her in the driveway where our beige station wagon was parked. When she sits in the kitchen talking over a problem with her parents, she stares at the same walls (minus the wallpaper) that were splattered with pie one memorable night. When her mother pulls open her drapes to wake her, the drapes are yellow, but the bedroom is the same.

Where some of my fondest childhood memories were made, my stories naturally take root and intertwine with those recollections of the past. As I write, I leave some details to the reader’s imagination, so you may build, from your own memories and experiences, the house where the story lives.