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The House on Medford Avenue

In the span of my existence, only three places have claimed me as theirs. The earliest sanctuary of my recollection was the home of my grandparents, where we occupied the upper flat of a weathered duplex until my third year. I was the late-born afterthought of our small family—my brother fifteen years my senior, my sister six.

Our departure from that ancestral roof was hastened by the tempestuous, escalating discord between my grandmother and my mother, whose frequent, shrieking arguments seemed to rattle the very windowpanes of our neighbors.

We arrived at Medford Avenue when I was six. I remember stepping from the sighing, rusted frame of our dying Ford Taurus, gazing in wide-eyed wonder at what my child's mind deemed an architectural marvel.