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Two year old Alex tore into the house on Oak Vine Drive past the rough stucco wall in the family room, dragging me by the hand. "Mommy, this is MY room!" Ah! The modest mass of wood and block on Oak Vine Drive found us. We'd seen many houses. This one shook our roots and blurted out "I am your home!" We knew that this was the perfect starter home for my soul mate and me to build our lives and our family. Just a little starter house.

Our house always seemed to rise a little taller than the other houses. Maybe our house perked up when we came home. Maybe our house stood up tall with joy to welcome us back home at the end of the day. Who knows? But our house definitely stood up a little taller, like a swollen with pride parent, in a special, not a superior, way.

Soon, tiny Vanessa joined us to make four. Birthday parties, Scout meetings, holiday rituals, patio bar-b-ques, and hours of swinging in the hammock, built on our foundation of our house on Oak Vine Drive. Each child planted a special tree and a small garden outside their bedroom window. Alex's tree, the laurel oak, stood tall and unflinching, just as he did during the tough teen years. Vanessa, our only native Cracker, selected non-Florida Chinese tallow. Much like the nectar of the tallow attractive to the bees, she grew sweet as honey. And we planted a Ruby Red grapefruit tree and a juicy navel orange tree. Someday we'd migrate to a bigger house.

Within a few years, I sadly came to grips with the heart-wrenching reality that my soul mate husband became my starter husband. The day he left, the foundation of our house on Oak Vine Drive shifted, leaving uncomfortable gaps in exterior and interior walls. But our house still stood a little taller, even after the geological studies and extensive repairs that left scars.

Our starter house on Oak Vine Drive grew to become our family's soul mate house. Alex and Vanessa grew up in this same house. Like an endangered species, to live one's childhood in the same house is a rare phenomenon today, especially in transient Florida.

The grass in the backyard never did sprout, a tribute to the choice a parent makes between displaying a manicured lawn or having a swing set and a slip-and-slide, and playing baseball, soccer, and monkey-in-the-middle in the backyard.

Once the kids begged to move to the "cooler" section of the school district. We looked at other houses, but we never found the right one. We just got busy filling the Oak Vine Drive house with memories and stories.

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