Writing Resources from Fifteen Minutes of Fiction

Why We Liked Our House

We used to live in that big red brick house over the bridge and next to the meadow. Mommy said she liked our house because it wasn't right in the middle of town like some of her friends' houses. To get to our place you had to drive out of town on Pleasant Road for about three miles, and then go over the brook, and if you weren't looking closely you might not even see our house; that's how far back from the road it was.

Daddy liked our house because he could go hunting in the woods out back. In the fall he took Jimmy out with him and they would sit all morning as quiet as they could, waiting for a deer to come wandering by so they could shoot it. They never got one, but daddy said it didn't matter because the real fun was spending time with his son. Jimmy rolled his eyes, but I know he was glad they didn't catch a deer. He's afraid of blood.

Jimmy liked our house, but it wasn't because of the woods out back. It was because of the big meadow just down the road where he and his friends could go after school and play football or baseball, or just lay on their backs and watch the clouds float by while they laughed and told stories and jokes and made fun of little sisters like me. But I didn't mind because I liked the meadow too, and thought Jimmy's friends were funny.

And even though granma didn't live with us, even she liked our house. She liked it because it was big, and bright and clean and was the perfect place for all the cousins and aunts and uncles to come for Easter dinner, or Thanksgiving.

Even though I did like the woods, and the meadow, and having all the cousins over, those aren't the real reason I liked our red brick house. I liked our house because up on the top where the shingles came to a point, there was a big red brick chimney. And every year at Christmas, Santa would fly down to our pointy roof in the middle of the night and scoot down our chimney and spread Christmas presents all over the place. One year he even managed to sqeeze an entire bicycle down that chimney for Jimmy!

But this year Daddy lost his job, and now there's no meadow and no woods, and no big red brick house just over the bridge, no place to gather the family together, and as I sit here in the shelter, the only thing I can think is this: they lock the doors and windows every night, so without a pointy roof and big brick chimney, is Santa going to be able to bring us anything tonight?

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