It could be any house. You’d recognize it if you saw it. If you got the box of photos out of the closet and started thumbing through the stacks held together by dry-rotted rubber bands, you’d eventually come across a picture of it. In an instant, a thousand memories would run through your mind from the stories that took place there.

It might be a white, wood frame farmhouse. Pastures on both sides. A weathered old barn visible in the background. Pecan trees standing like sentries guarding the homeplace. And even though the picture is in black and white, the memories are in technicolor.

Maybe it’s a brick house in town. A short concrete driveway that leads up to a two car garage that stands separate from the house. A front door that nobody uses because everybody knows to come to the side door. There’s a screened-in porch on the back where there’s always a cool breeze. In the photo, a bicycle is lying in the grass near the steps.

There might be a lake near the house. Maybe an empty lot that was home to endless hours of tag, baseball, and lightning bugs in mason jars. A streetlight where you threw the football with your cousin after dark. Or out so far in the country that there was no light at all, and you laid on your back in the front yard to look up at the Milky Way and count the stars.

That’s the house I’m talking about. We all have one. Some of us had several because we moved a lot, but there is always one that stands out. Some of us were lucky enough, at least I call it lucky, to have the same one for as far back as we can remember.

The thing is…a house is more than wood and brick, windows and doors. A house doesn’t just contain the table where we ate our meals, or the bed where we slept, or the bathroom mirror where we learned to shave. A house is more than that.

A house is a repository of a life. It is the curator of a collection in which we store some of our most treasured memories. One look at the picture that you’re holding in your hand, and you realize, even after 50 or 60 years, that all of the days you spent in this house are the days you keep going back to.

And if this house could talk it would tell you about those nights when your mom and dad sat together at the kitchen table trying to figure out how to pay the bills. You weren’t around, or maybe you were just too young to understand how much they sacrificed to make sure you had what you needed. You crawled up in your mama’s lap without a care in the world.

If this house could talk it would tell you how big a deal it was when you learned to use the potty. How your big sister gave you a high-five. How you watched your dad and was amazed at how good he was at going potty. And how you finally figured out that going potty, even outside in the backyard, was a good way to get a piece of chocolate in the middle of the morning.

If this house could talk it would tell you about the wrestling matches in the living room floor with your buddies. The Friday night sleepovers. Your first taste of turnips. The sound of the screened door slamming behind you. The sound of your mother’s voice calling you in for supper. The races with your sister to answer the phone when it rang during supper.

“Dad…it’s for you.”

If this house could talk it would tell you about all the backyard cookouts with hamburgers on the grill and ice cream in the churn. A crowd of adults sitting around in lawn chairs talking. Kids running like wild animals playing chase.

“Hey,” your mama says. “Y’all take it to the front yard so we can hear ourselves think.”

There was so much laughter and squealing and more laughter.

If this house could talk it would tell you about the times your mama quietly cried in the kitchen when she didn’t think anyone was watching. But you saw her. How she wept over things you couldn’t possibly understand, but which one day you would have some idea. And you realize now that some of those tears were shed for you.

If this house could talk it would tell you about the time you brought the first grandchild home. How your dad got down on the floor and made cooing noises, and how you were worried if he really knew how to handle a baby.

“Let me pick her up for you, Dad.”

“Keep your hands to yourself,” he says. “I’ve got her.”

If this house could talk it would tell you about how quiet it got once you were gone and how much your folks looked forward to each time you and your family came home to visit. It would tell you about all the conversations they had around the kitchen table, wondering how you and the kids were doing. What you were up to, and when you might come again.

If this house could talk it would tell you how much it enjoyed every single moment that passed under its watchful care. It would point out the markings on the door post to the kitchen that tell how many inches you grew from year to year. It would remind you of those grown-up conversations you had with your dad out in the backyard.

And if this house could talk it would say to you, “Don’t take it for granted.”

Because, if this house could talk it would tell you that one day everything will change. You won’t want to believe it, but you know it’s true. There’ll come a day when you won’t come here to visit like you used to. There will come a time when the quiet in this house is permanent. When the noise of little feet is gone forever. When the TV isn’t blaring above the conversation. When the front door will be locked and you’ll no longer  have a key.

If this house could talk it would tell you, “I’m old and tired. My roof is nearly gone. My time is over.”

And in one final breath, if this house could talk it would tell you that your house is the new curator of the family. It’s the place your kids think of when they talk about home. It’s the house your grandkids love to visit. It’s the house, now, that is full of screams and laughter, where the screened door slams and new memories are being made.

It would tell you not to grieve the past as much as you cherish the present. It would say that it doesn’t matter where the house is as long as it’s a home.

“Keep the porch light on,” it would say. “You never know when family, old or new, might show up.”

I mean, that’s what I think anyway…if this house could talk.