I was something of a kid celebrity back in elementary school, a distinction owed to no talent of my own.

My house was directly across the street from the school, a pastel yellow cottage home with white shutters. You could see it out of the bank of classroom windows that faced west. I had at the time (and still to this day haven’t shaken) a propensity for tardiness. Every morning, my classmates could see me swing open the front door of my house and bolt across the schoolyard, chasing after the bell. They congratulated me if I beat the buzzer.

My family moved into that house in the fall of 2001. I, being a toddler at the time, have no memory of that move, but I’ve heard my parents reminisce about the day they knew the place was home. It was just a couple days after the move-in trucks departed, and my mom, still unpacking boxes and arranging furniture, spotted two five-year-old boys peering into the house, their grubby hands pressed against the glass front door. “We heard there’s a boy here,” they said. My mom watched my brother run off without her.

I’ll admit, I welcomed the fanfare that came with my celebrity status. One time, with the winking permission of a recess chaperone, I crossed the street to retrieve my lunchbox, which I’d forgotten at home. These were the days, mind you, when it was daring to cross the street without holding your mommy’s hand. My friends peered from behind the tetherball poles as I carried out the most legendary heist of the third grade. I returned triumphant, peanut-butter-jelly sandwich in hand.

Soon third grade gave way to fourth and then fifth. At Shorewood Elementary School graduation, the grand finale of my fame, I twirled around in my chiffon dress and flashed a smile at my crush. The time had come for my season of middle school angst, which meant it was also time for new kids and PTO moms to take over my old stomping grounds. As the newbies shuffled in behind us, we peered out our windows and watched the schoolyard change: trees were cut down and new ones planted, old traditions were axed and newfangled ones sprouted up in their place. It ruffled our feathers, at times, watching time march on.

But the smell of that school building is stubborn. The decades can’t fumigate the halls. Each year, my memories of those years grow fainter. That is, until I step inside that building for one reason or another and it all floods back. Each time I return, the lockers and desks seem to have shrunk a little smaller, but the grooves of the hallways are unchanged. Muscle memory.

I cried the day I left for college, when we drove away from the yellow house and hurtled toward the unknown. But I trusted that childhood would remain suspended in time, somehow, always waiting for me to return. That I could unearth it all again over Thanksgiving break, that it would all be normal again by Christmas.

I remember the first time I caught myself saying, as I walked back to my dorm room, that I was “going home.” Home.

I’m glad I wasn’t there to watch us pack back up the moving trucks this summer. I was already off in a new city for a summer internship, so my parents locked up the house for the last time without me. It’s time for a new season, though I don’t yet know what that season will bring. The yellow house has green shutters now, instead of white ones, which makes me sad. But two little boys live there now, which makes me happy. It’s their turn.

Although, I’ll admit that in selfish moments, I want it back. I worry sometimes that without our house, the memories might not reawaken. That they will gather dust. That they will be buried under layers of sediment. But then I realize that it’s been years since I’ve last visited Shorewood Elementary, and I can still smell the hot lunch and hear the bell ringing as I run toward it. 

“The Lord gives everything and charges/ by taking it back,” wrote poet Jack Gilbert. “What a bargain./ Like being young for a while.”