Within the many tree-lined roads of Claremont California, lies a house where the very essence of my childhood is contained.

When my grandparents came down from Oregon every couple of months, they’d pick me up in their Highlander, big and blue, and we’d cruise down those tree-lined streets until we stopped at that little house I loved so.

The house on 11th Street had a lone olive tree in the front yard, standing tall and skinny. Rose bushes tangled into an intricate web of colors; yellow, red, pink, and white covered the front porch. Along the sides of the house grew great bushes of lavender. The backyard contained every type of fruit tree imaginable; lemons as big as my head, a lime tree whose thorns pierced my foot one summer, tangerines and clementines in the very back, one bright beautiful peach tree that could only seem to grow peaches every blue moon. Tomatoes were sometimes planted, and pumpkins occasionally spread across the back porch. With the knowledge of a child who only knew things could grow and grow and grow I attempted to plant a watermelon seed. Just one. I watered it each and every day and waited for it to grow and grow and grow, but it never did.

I don’t have many memories of my childhood. Everything is a fuzzy confusing mess of emotions and feelings. But I do remember the house on 11th Street, I can never seem to escape it. It grows on me like a fungus, it clings like a leech.

That neighborhood is where I learned how to ride a bike for the first time. Pink helmet on I’d go round and round the elementary school playground, fumbling to gain balance. I remember walking to Wolfe’s Market, a store only a block away, and being in such awe at how a store could be close enough for us to walk to.

Downtown is the music store where I bought my first ukelele, and triumphantly played a jumbled song for Baba outside. The bakery where I picked out a lemon-flavored birthday cake, small and yellow. Walters restaurant where my fondest meals were, the pizza place on the corner I went to after my great grandpa died. The biggest record store I’ve ever seen. Barbara Cheatly’s full of colorful knickknacks, soaps, aprons, cards, and earrings; a store for everything you could ever wish for.

Since then the little house on 11th Street has been sold, the record store is gone, and Barbara Cheatly’s is no more. I recently went back to show my boyfriend those tree-lined roads that contain so many memories. But nothing is the same anymore, and how is that fair? In my eyes the town was perfect, the house was perfect. Since the new owner moved in she took down the olive tree, as well as the roses, I haven’t been in the backyard since, so its contents are a mystery to me. I always feel like there is some part of me in Claremont, a part I’ll never be able to get back.

I look on the last time I slept in that small twin bed that looked out to those giant lemon trees and wished I cherished it more, wish I knew one day it would end.

To me, I couldn’t imagine not having 11th Street. It wasn’t a possibility. But like many things the impossible becomes possible.