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Our childhood home

By Joanna Porte Santos Alonso   

 February 14, 2015 

Something we all remember very well from our old home in "La Grange" was the hot summers. We lived in front of my grandfather’s dairy called “La grange”, which meant the farm in French since he was part of a couple of French families that came to Monterrey. Not only was that convenient when you ran out of milk in the morning but it gave that house it´s peculiar name to which we call it amongst us, the old house of "La Grange".

We had a wonderful outdoor terrace were my sister and I road our first bike, had birthday parties or just enjoyed the cold wind gusts in the summer's blinding sun's heat. That terrace gave way to a big patio with an avocado tree at the left, in front the grass always green and the trees around the house's borders tall as their 50 years of life had let them grow. There was this particular tree that had the perfect form of branches to let you climb it with ease. Living with two older brothers and a twin sister that tree wasn’t the tallest tree off all but at least it left you feeling accomplished about the feat.

We had a gardenia bush in the right corner, it could give 40-50 flowers just in the morning and in the afternoon you could count them and they would be over 100 flowers. The house was impregnated with its smell, every room and everywhere, in flower vases or even rustic teacups. White flowers with deep green leaves and steam.
Those summers even if they were hot, they were one of the most enjoyable parts of my childhood.

But the memories that will forever linger from the summers in our childhood home are the cicadas’ constant chant. Yes a beautiful chant, or in the words of my sister "defining but delightful".

Wherever we go it’s such a special sound that we can never forget. My sister, my mother and I can't fail to link that sound to that house. It's hard to even begin to describe how such a loud sound; insignificant or even annoying for other, can be for us part of such wonderful memories.

The defending and delightful chant of the cicada's, it is now that I realize the harmony of the wind that as it passed by would delicately move the avocado tree's leaves as the bird sang in delight and with the butterflies dancing to its rhythm.