The Barn
This is the barn behind the house I grew up in. It was red for a long time; I'm not sure what color this is. It has two stalls - you can see the open door to one of them here; the other is behind it. On the end opposite the stalls is an open "garage" for lawn equipment and stuff (and there was plenty of "stuff" of indeterminate use or value), and in the middle is the tack room to keep the saddles and bridles and feed.
There's a loft, too - all good barns need a loft - and like most lofts it's just some boards on top of rafters over the stalls. There's not enough room up there to sit up completely, although I could as a child. It was fun to climb up there and lie under the tin roof and listen to the rain above and the horses chomping grain below, but usually it was too stuffy to stay up there for long. It was a place one could run away to the way kids run away for an hour or so when they're fed up with something about their lives.
It's funny how things look so different when one is an adult. There was always a fence around the whole thing, to keep the horses in, of course. I took this photo on the day my mom moved out of the house, and the people who bought it had already taken the fence down. Seeing the barn without the fence is almost like seeing a photo of someone without their glasses. Yes, it's the same, but no it isn't. For one thing, what's the point of a barn that doesn't have a fence around it to keep the barn animals in? But of course by then the horses were gone to new homes.
I'm not sure what the new owners are doing with the property. I am not entirely sure I want to know. We heard they may rent out the house; I figured they'd tear it down and build several houses on the property. It certainly needed updating and some of the kind of work that might not be worth doing - a new well, electrical system update, etc.
So I will mostly keep my own version of the barn, and the house, and my room in my mind for my memories. I think that works best anyway.
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I haven't been back to the house I grew up in for many years now and now wouldn't want to, as I've been told that my mother's treasured garden, on which she worked so hard, has been allowed to run wild. Some places are better left unvisited except in memory.