Childhood Homes
It is as it always was
Though different
Ceilings lower
Paint worn
And the steps of the staircase I once walked
Seem narrower
Darker
I don’t quite trust that creak beneath my feet
It all feels very fragile
Or is that me?
Where once I ran without thought
Rooms echoing to the sound of childish feet
Stand silent
Replete in their new adornments. Nothing here belongs to me
I am a passing thought
Wandering, looking for an anchor that does not catch
But drags aimlessly
Memory and this moment are at war
We leave things just so
But of course they change
Become different, whilst we are gone
And the mind must account for that difference
So the myths shimmer within the charade
What is real feels hard and alien beneath my finger tips
Grains of dust sugar my human prints
Smudging, smearing something uniquely me
Leaving a ghost within
Neither here nor there
Floating
Childhood homes are strange places to the dispossessed
When parents have moved on, some deep mooring is lacking
Then others move in
Usurping,
Like some sort of sacred transgression of memory and moment that is not even ours to begin with
Yet it feels so damn personal
Away on the horizon
out the grey glass window
My mind takes me backwards
A screen door whines and bangs
It’s just the wind surely
That has the hairs raising
Along my skin
The scent of 4711 is missing
O’Cedar oil has vanished
And the tick of the iron roof as it heats
reminds me
A sky with no sun
Not even one that can be found behind a cloud
A sun that is now gone
Moved on to another universe perhaps
That’s it
The feeing I had been trying to put my hand on
Soothe that itch
I stand beneath a sunless sky
inside a hollow hide
Because childhood homes do indeed
Die
born again ye lady
see it s i not me
you know we had the skeleton key
never used
cos mummy would not lock the door
until she was robbed at gun point
everything was bigger
then except
me and my closed mind
dig?
Reading this is like reliving the time I went to visit one of my childhood homes. Everything felt wrong. In my case the place had been spruced up and didn’t match the run down home from my memories. It was quite disconcerting.
It’s very disconcerting Monty, the difference between memory and fact, past and present. A sadness sometimes a kind of mourning, but no firm reason for that emotion. I wrote this some time ago – the photo I took of the window catch – when I was a child they reminded me of elephants. Back then, I saw patterns on the pressed iron of the ceilings and pictures in the convolutions of the printed vinyl flooring. Our creativity is innate and our dreaming immense as children – I think this why our childhood homes have such a grip on our consciousness, and when we return as adults they are ordinary shells with no magic at all, yet the aroma of our imagination lingers.
Filled with sadness and nostalgia for a childhood home no longer the same.
Nostalgia is such a lovely word Rosaliene, and it certainly fits the theme.
That is just brilliant.
Thanks Granny 😊
Except in dreams. Those rare, vivid, beautiful dreams where you’re back home. And you long to stay, even though you know it’s just a dream.
I’ve had those dreams.
We were walking the beach in front of our old house, and the new owner came out and invited us to come see what they were doing … They had gutted the whole house – all the work my husband had done on it for the last 30 years – getting ready to remodel. I felt bad for my husband, but being a sensible man, he said later, “It’s their house now.” Still, when I dream of being back there, it’s the same as it was when it was full of our children and their friends.
That’s the other sort of childhood home – the one our children were born into and grew up in – I packed up my sons rooms eventually when they had been moved out for a few years, but they still come into our home and lean around and I’m so glad it’s still here for them