There once was a House that held the happiness and heat of a foreign and tropical land colonized by conquistadors before it faded into history.

I crawled on its wooden floors before I knew how to walk. Inside it, I held my bottle and cried.  People squeezed my cheeks until they were red and sore. 

The house felt familiar until it wasn’t.  

Over the years, it disappeared and I met other houses and forgot all about that house. It became a stranger to me. If it were not for another encounter it would have been as it had never existed.  

Two decades and so into my life I met this house again.  It was strange like a museum showcasing old photographs, medals, and a kimono behind a glass.  The kimono looked like one I wore when I was four years old when my dad was stationed in Japan.  Next to it was a bronze medal that reminded me of one I was awarded in Kindergarten, but my mother had packed it in a box and mailed it off to who knows where and why, a fate lost in the wind of time.

Walking through the house, old memories flashed back to a time I had forgotten because I was so young.  My mom told me that the house was a mansion, which didn’t feel quite like one to me.

It felt like a museum, and it belonged to an aunt that looked like my mom, except older with all her hair gone white. She was a sister of my daddy-lolo, a doña of reputation, and she carried herself with the grace of  nobility.  That generation was the last of their kind, their beauty, youth, and opulence fading with them like antique photographs.

After that visit the house faded, and I wonder if it even existed or was it all a dream.  Nevertheless,  I miss it’s familiarity like I would miss a family I may never meet again.