Violated

That's how I feel right now.  Violated.

That's the window of my front porch.  Well, not my front porch today, but the front porch I grew up in.  The window I could see out when I had to wash dishes.

That used to be the back door I ran in and out of to the back yard.  It was the laundry room and the pantry was just off to the left when you walked in the door. 

That's the window I watched the big lightening storm out of when I was a little kid.  I sat there in the dining room with my Mom, just the two of us.  I saw a flash of lightening so big, so bright, so close and so perfectly formed it scared the socks off me! 

And those are the doors we used to leave open in the summer to get the breeze in.  When we were really little that was the bedroom of my older brothers.  When I was a teenager it was my Dad's "den".  I can still see him sitting at his desk, balancing his check book, grumbling to himself.  I can still see 11 year old me sitting at the ancient computer playing the old Wagon Train, Westward expansion, game.  It was one of the only computer games I had.  This was pre Nintendo days. 

I took Paulo berry picking today out on Sauvie's Island.  To get there we have to pass down Highway 30, which is where my old childhood home sits.  I saw my Dad's white truck in the driveway on our way out to the farm.  I figured if he were still there when we came back we'd stop, I'd show Paulo the house I grew up in-it's light years away from how he's growing up, almost like another planet, and he's old enough to start to understand where I came from.  He was still there an hour or so later when we passed back by so we stopped.  And I found my Dad standing in the driveway and our house, vandalized.  The house has been empty for years.  I started pushing my Dad to demo it a few months ago, for a variety of reasons, but one of those is that this empty house is a liability.  I was more concerned about a homeless person getting in and starting a fire to keep warm, that fire then getting out of control, destroying the business next door, Forest Park, etc.  But I also knew that his house was a huge temptation to vandals.  It's like the geek in 5th grade with a kick me sign taped to his back.  Unfortunately we have a lot of red tape to cut through because the house is still titled to his late 1st wife, we hired an attorney and the slow process began.  It's has not gotten very far.  And sometime after Wednesday and before today, someone decided to kick my house.

I just feel, violated.  This was my home.  I came home from the hospital to this house when I was born.  I learned to walk in this house.  I learned to ride a bike just down the street in the big parking lot of a warehouse.  I remember my bike, it was a Christmas present, it had a banana seat.  I celebrated Christmas there more years than not until I was an adult, and even then, when I was in college I came home there for holidays.  My Mom baked cookies and bread in that kitchen.  She read to me in that house.  My Father and I played uno and built jig saw puzzles in that dining room.  And someone just peed all over my family home.  Yes it's uninhabitable now, but it was our home at one time.  Two people raised a family there.  It didn't belong to them, they did not have the right to kick my house.