What a nice essay. Your bit about the house flooding the night you moved in resonated with me. When I was 2, my family moved to a newly-built house in the suburbs, on a road that wasn't even paved yet. It was about right before Christmas. My siblings were 7 and 11. There had been a blizzard that weekend. Even better, the basement flooded just a few weeks after we moved in. My dad's college diploma and my Raggedy Andy doll were among the casualties. So I can totally sympathize with realizing, as an adult now, how much that must have sucked for my parents.