111 Greenbrier Drive Southeast

The Lost Cottage

After Mom and Dad split, Dad moved in here - a short walk from where my sisters and I all grew up. He thought it was in our best interest that he be as close as possible to Mom. I am unsure to this day what life would look like had he moved farther away, but I certainly am curious. This house felt large as a twelve year old. I remember being quite optimistic about now getting to live in two homes. It was pretty cool seeing Dad buy a house. I had witnessed it before, but ten years prior and with much less understanding of the world. (I was two years old) Throughout the years, I grew to love this place. In my high school and college years, I spent most of my time here as opposed to my mother's place, as it was just us guys, my Dad and I. There was something nice about that. No estrogen around. Dad and I had to learn how to get along together just the two of us, me being a somewhat sneaky kid trying to get around town under his nose, and him trying to discipline me appropriately. Thankfully, I never got into drugs or alcohol until I was off to college. I was however sneaking around with girlfriends. This house is really long, and it sits at the end of this older neighborhood. I remember being disappointed every year on Halloween because we weren't getting any trick-or-treaters. Childhood dead? Neighborhood dead? No. The house had been vacant for some time and it had too many rumors attached to it from before my Dad buying it. Parents would stop their kids before they got to the yard. I spent many nights driving 10 minutes to Uptown Grand Rapids to drink Kava and Kratom at the local Kava Bar, Kava Kasa. That place was my escape. I would study, chat, party, and just plain relax there. I made many friends there too. It's still open as I'm currently writing this. 111 Greenbrier should really be transported to a lakeside. It feels like a cottage that somehow ended up in Grand Rapids township, and is missing it's long lost body of water. Large back deck, big A frame living room windows, a long hallway. It screams exiled cottage. I spent the 2020 pandemic here. I played a ton of videogames. It was awesome. I should have been doing tiktok dances I suppose. I became a billionaire on Grand Theft Auto 5 instead. I moved away from Dad in February of 2022 when I decided to join my sisters in Miami. Dad still lives there. I love that house for carrying the dirtier memories of my teenage angst as I was trying to figure out who I was and what I was doing with my life. If only someone would have told me that that feeling never really goes away, I wouldn't have felt so bad about it! At night, you cannot escape the sound of cars whirring by at 65-80mph. If you learn to hate it, you'll never sleep. But if you learn to love it, you'll dream about wherever those strangers are going...