There was a big hole in the ground. A really big hole.
It seemed to be as deep as the ocean. I was clinging to my dad's leg and peering over the edge. We were in the field where our future home would be. The field was covered in luscious green grass. The hole below me was dirt. Dark, brown, dirty earth.
We walked over to the area that would be our basement. It didn't look like a basement to me. Sure, I was only four, but it didn't look like a basement to me. It looked like a hole full of dirt.
We saw the cement trucks pulling in. They started dumping loads of mushy gray goo into the brown hole. My parents carefully explained that they would put this in first, then the walls, then the upper floors, and at the end we would have an entire house. Perhaps they could even build me a swing set in the back yard with the spare lumber.
The expansive sky drifted upward from the cow pastures surrounding our plot of land. In a few months there would be a house here, and a vegetable garden and a swing set in the back yard. My dad would have "shop" next to the house to store his lawn mower and everything that mom wouldn't let him keep in the garage.
But right now it just looked like a hole. A big, brown hole.
"Earliest Memory" exercise, Tell it Slant pg. 60
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I like the repeated use of the word hole. I like how your house came out of this really big hole. That something so special to you now came out of what your 4 year old self saw as nothing but a really big hole. lol
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