When I was little, I lived in a brown fortress that was 300 feet tall and a half-block long.

There were cavernous rooms, acres of green grass and flowering trees, and a stream in the backyard. It was a home. It was alive, a member of our family. And it was huge. Adults would say it was only 1,200 square feet, but back then, hundreds of anything sounded enormous.

Even though I was 17—adult sized—when our family moved out of it, to me, the house was still the same giant it had been when I was 3. But now, all these years later, when I drive down the old street, I think: Who put this little brown box where my mansion used to be?

The old giant still exists, however—I visit it in every dream, and in the set designs behind the movies of my reminiscence. My memories live in that house like some lost “Honeymooners” episode playing somewhere out in space. I’ll show you some of them; we can even take a walk through the rooms.

This is the living room: Baby Jame takes her first steps on Earth while on the TV Neil Armstrong takes his first steps on the moon. Teenage Jennifer accidentally kicks the hi-fi on her way down the hall and breaks her toe a week before the prom. Dad reads the newspaper in the afternoon with his medicinal Beefeaters and a handful of crackers. Also here, we make the shocking discovery that Nanny and her sister Mae hoot when they laugh. Yes, hoot.

The dining room is connected to the living room. Little Jennifer drinks somebody’s wine and giggles under the table while the priest is visiting from overseas. Teenage Jo cries over her homework at the table; listen for the words “note cards.” And Dad corrects drawings and reviews lesson plans. Here we are eating too much stuffing and turkey in November, and crab legs for Christmas Eve. Mom drinks zero-proof wassail and wears velvet skirts. I draw on the walls with crayon because I heard that’s what kids are supposed to do.

Then the kitchen, tucked in between: here’s me making Jell-O layers in stem glasses while my mother, in her infinite patience and snap-front apron, makes room for them in the fridge. Jo is not-very-sneakily sneaking the Ugly Fork onto my napkin with a conciliatory smile. Jennifer refuses to eat anything that bleeds. And Dad unwittingly pours shampoo-rinse vinegar over his corned beef and cabbage while we watch it bubble with suds. If it is Thursday and/or somebody got her braces (painfully) adjusted, then it must be pork chop night. Soon the broiler will smoke, the air will darken, the alarm will sound, and someone will open the front door and wave a magazine at the ceiling.

And here and here and here are just us womenfolk gabbing, telling our stories around the starburst Formica over bottomless glasses of artificially-flavored diet cola that may or may not kill us someday.

The last room I will show you is my room: Frankenstein still kicks down the left wall every night and the central air comes on and shuts off every summer, making a sound in the attic that could only be ghosts having a cocktail party. Through this window, I greet the same Catskill mountain every morning and night. From only this precise angle, it looks like my sister’s body, asleep in the next room. I lay awake struggling with the afterlife and trying to grasp eternity, until I almost throw up. I switch to making up stories, to keep my mind off my soul. By day, I sprawl on this scratchy brown carpet, endlessly sketching faces on scrap paper. Homework gets done here, too. And ridiculous exercises that involve legwarmers. These are the boys who aren’t supposed to be in here...

And then—it’s over.

These are the boxes packed. The house is empty of hi-fi, starburst Formica, and the Ugly Fork. This is my last look around, which I somehow do not recall—perhaps my mind was already sealing off the memories, protecting them from the present. And that’s the end of my childhood home. The brown giant is gone forever, except in my mind.

But I can still smell the iron railing on my hands. I can still put my finger in the burn mark in the carpet by the fireplace and feel the concrete beneath. And I can still wake on a moonless night, hear the heat ticking in the baseboards and be certain I’m in my girlhood bed, safe in my parents’ care, in the embrace of this house.

Can’t we carry it with us? What is a home if not, at least partly, a collection of memories?