Moving Out Again

By Bena DeCenzo

We had nowhere to go... We were homeless. 

The morning before, it was a beautiful day in July. We were all relaxing and enjoying our Saturday. My parents were in the kitchen, and my brothers were playing on the iPad in the family room while I was watching Caillou. We lived in an older modern house with lots of nature around it, so we had a great deal of trees in our yard. We could tell some were getting old, but the government did not permit taking them down. We hadn’t really thought about it that much. 

You know when you have a feeling of having no worries on a day, and everything is going smoothly? Well, that just about never happens, and usually means something unfortunate is about to happen.

 All of a sudden, from the corner of my eye I saw my brother leap up as if bit by a spider. He started yelling and ran to the front door. A loud crash happened, and without looking I jumped up and followed. My parents started yelling our names, thinking that we had done something. They opened the door and we ran outside, agitated, in our pajamas. 

My mom called the police, not knowing what else to do. The police got there shortly after, followed by a fire truck. The firemen ran inside and inspected the damage. They taped off the areas that were dangerous or had broken glass. After a while I started to get cold since I was in my thin pajamas, and my mom asked a fireman if he would go get me some clothes. He took me inside and I was shocked by what I saw: a massive 150 foot monterey pine tree lying on top of my house. I saw all of the dirt on the ground, and branches seeping in through the roof. Oddly, there was only one broken window. It was a strange feeling, like it was all a dream because, well, why would this be happening to me?  

I pointed at where my bedroom was as I took in what had happened. The fireman came back with some clothes. I took the clothes and went into the kitchen and got dressed. My emotions were all over the place. I was anxious for my parents since it was a massive inconvenience. I was worried for my family because we didn’t have a place to live. Everything was happening so fast. 

The police couldn’t tell my parents anything about what they should do, or what the insurance covered. So they were starting to get frustrated, if they weren’t already. I looked around and there came our neighbor, in her pajamas; she came over and started talking to my parents. I walked over to my brothers, who were over by the car. We stood outside my house for about two hours before my parents finally decided to take us to a hotel.

It was a really amusing hotel. It had room service, a pool, and a delightful restaurant. One thing I was very happy about were the chocolates they left on our beds. We thought that we needed a break after this traumatic experience, so my brothers and I relaxed. We watched TV for the rest of the day, whilst my parents were trying to figure everything out. On top of all of that, we found out that our old house was infested with mold, so we had to send everything out to be cleaned. For the next two months we ended up living in the hotel. We had to move rooms a couple of times, but it was still fun. We decided that instead of buying a new house, we would just build our dream house on the plot of the old house.

While we waited for our dream house to be built, we found a house that we liked, and bought it to live in for the time being. We couldn’t move in right away, because we had to wait for our things to be returned from the cleaners. When we finally got all of our belongings back, it was time to move in. We lived in that house for about two years. We did a lot of renovations, making it the newest it could be. We sold it for more than the original selling price, and the people who bought it still live in it to this day.

 Our dream house was still not done, so we had to rent a place. We rented a nicely sized five bedroom house. There were four bedrooms in the house, and a guest house outside. That house was awesome, because it had a loft and I had my own bathroom. We signed a lease for two years, thinking that was how long our new dream house was going to take to build. The people who owned it wanted to come back after a year and a half. My parents tried to say that we leased it for two years, but they used any method they could to have us kicked out, so we had to find a new place to live. 

We rented a new place that had four bedrooms with a guest house. I liked that house, because it had a pool and a massive backyard, but we lived next to a really rich guy on a cul de sac. He was making plans to buy every house on the street and turn the street into one big house. We didn’t think it would happen to us so we continued to live there with no doubts. But after one year, the rich guy decided to bargain with the owner of the house to kick us out and sell it to him. Since he was a millionaire, he bought the house for way more than what it was worth. We weren’t going to dig our heels in about it anyway because we were going to move into our dream home soon. 

After that we rented a really small house, since we were only going to live in it for about six months. The house had the tiniest backyard, and only three bathrooms. It was hard for a family of five with three growing children. The bright side was that we lived right next door to one of our favorite restaurants. 

Once our house was done being built, at least livable, we moved in. When I walked in it immediately felt like our home. We all got to design our rooms before moving in. So I had already seen everything I wanted to put into my room online but never altogether, so when I walked in I was mesmerized by how pretty my room was. While walking around I remembered my mom talking about all of the astonishing things she added, it was so cool to actually be able to see them in person. The moving process took a long time, since we had to move all of the stuff we had stashed away. Our final dream house is done and it’s as pretty as a picture. It’s everything we wanted it to be. I know that my mom says there's a lot she would have done differently but I think it’s perfect. I’m super happy for my mom that our house is finally done. That means no more moving for a long time. 

I am kind of regretful that we weren’t going to move again. I really like experiencing different ways to live and how to live in different places.