My dad is talking about selling the house. I have pictures of all of us, our family, standing on the high beams of the second floor, when it had no walls. And there's laughter and pride in my parents' faces, they have their arms around each others' waists. The house lasted longer than their marriage. The mortgages paid for the divorce.

As a house, it's a good one. Nothing leaks, nothing's skewed, nothing's falling apart. It's beautiful, with nice woodwork on five acres in the middle of nowhere. But I tried to explain to my dad through tears, the worst since my dog died, that it's not just a house. It's the last good thing. Because the house is from before the war I'll relive at the slightest provocation, it's the memorial of the bond that tied a family together before we turned on each other. We did it, even my sister and I, because we were there and we lived in the tent and brought our parents nails and screws and hammers. Building the house was everyone's full-time job, together.

It's not his to sell, though he owns it and he's the only one who lives there. It's my memory and my symbol and had I known there was a risk that it would be ripped away from me I would not have left so thoughtlessly. Even though I'm not having kids, I have visions of bringing grandchildren to see him there and run through the same woods we built forts in and decorated with nicotine yellow crystals. I want to walk people around and tell them there was the log that was a house and an airplane and there was the treehouse we built with bunkbeds and a trapdoor and real glass windows and there was where I saw a ghost when I was a little girl and there was where the burning barrel used to be, on that hill covered with bluebells, and there was my dog's favorite place to lie in the sun, and this wall used to be a pile of rocks and this porch used to be a postage stamp.

No one else could live there and love that place like I do, or like we do. Never. It's not a dream home, it's a home that's only beautiful because we know it so well. Because all our history took place there. It would be like selling my little sister. Impossible.

And yes, it's selfish and juvenile and a whole host of other things I ought to be above. But I'm bitter and I have a lot of scars and I have not moved past that yet and I cannot give up the one big part of my history that was good to me. I told him, and I think it made a difference.