Share something about the house you grew up in

Janell's third prompt. Also, I was quite young at this point and these are the details as I remember them. No one else seems to remember the exact details like I do, so we'll just say my recollection from when I was 6(?) is perfect.

Image from here.

My dad, being a general contractor at the time, picked an old fixer-upper when he and my mom bought their first house together in the late 1980s. And, like many fixer-uppers, it was never finished. The house I grew up in was under construction from the time we moved in when I was 3 until the time we moved out 11 years later. But stuff like that doesn't matter one bit to kids. I saw that house through rose-colored child-sized glass and to this day wish I could scrape together the ridiculous amount it would take to buy it and move back (I just googled the address and it sold for $849,000 in November of 2005. It's a 3 bd 1.5 bath. San Francisco Bay Area = ridiculous).

Because of the age of the house and constant construction there were holes. Holes in floors, holes in walls, holes beside fixtures. None of us remember the exact details as to why there was a hole in the wall of my parents' bedroom but there was probably a good explanation.

In any event, inside that hole we found a watch. And not just any watch.

A pink Disney Princess Cinderella watch.

When you are a small girl there is no greater joy than a pink Disney Princess Cinderella watch. The fact that it came from inside the wall just made it that much more of a treasure. Since our house was fairly old I was convinced that watch was quite old as well. An antique! Probably an antique worth thousands of dollars!

I touched and held that watch with great reverence, in awe of the beauty and value. I wanted it, of course, but I knew my mom wouldn't give a 6(?) year old girl a watch worth thousands of dollars. Such watches were meant to be kept under glass or maybe sold at an antique store so that I could go to college.

The watch disappeared and, being young and easily distracted, I quickly forgot about it as we soon discovered that there were a bunch of small, glittery beads embedded in the cement outside our neighbor's fence. And, of course, they had to be pried out so that we could do absolutely nothing with them.

Then, a few years after moving to Arizona, I was digging through my mom's jewelry box and lo, what did I find? The watch! She still had it! No wonder I needed a scholarship to go to college. Except by then I was sort of hip to the fact that Disney Princess watches, even pink Cinderella ones, aren't real monetary treasures.

It's still a treasure though! I rediscover it every once in a while and I love that watch. I love that my beloved old house harbored such a treasure to delight a 6 year old. I love that my mom kept it safely hidden away in her jewelry box. I love that, whenever I run across it, I remember us all kneeling in my mom and dad's old room with it's peeling wallpaper and brick fireplace in awe of our beautiful discovery.

I searched long and hard for that watch this weekend so I would have a picture to share. Except apparently now is not the time for me to stumble across it. My parents just moved and it is likely still in a box somewhere. I did, however, find this picture of Cinderella with Nikki and me at Disneyland for my 5th birthday. It works.

Dear people who wonder at Wes's curls,

See: my sister's head, bottom right.

Kisses,

The Straight Haired One on the Left