Just the other day I wrote a letter to an old address, to who ever is living there now, with memories of the place where I grew up. Most likely I will never send it but for some reason, I don’t know why, I wanted to do it and it started me thinking.....
I have often wondered when we leave a house we have lived in for many
years...do we leave a part of us behind in that property?
Just recently I have been looking at maps on line of where I grew up on the
other side of the world in London. The streets, roads and avenues have housed
generation after generation of families. Each with their very own
stories..challenges and triumphs. The many happy memories and the many sad
times. The births deaths and marriages have come and gone in those many houses,
flats and tiny bed sits over the years.
The roads with such familiar names to so many families have no idea who
previously lived at that address and it’s history. People and shops come and go
but street names remain the same. The hills and bends we travelled as a child
are still there. The corner where I remembered how to tie a shoe lace on the way
to school...to find a short cut...where I fell over... or to maybe steal an
apple from that overhanging tree branch we knew at the time was wrong but it
tasted so good anyway. To avoid someone we didn’t want to see or for them to see
us. The park where I used to go when older and the shops I used to visit when I
should have been at school and thought no one would ever see me...but they
did...oh they did. The house where a friend of mine lived and was so different
to the flat three floors up where we lived. But I knew no better...some people
had nice houses and we had a flat with a balcony when all I really wished for at
the time was for a garden to run and play in and most of all to have a dog; alas
which the rent rules didn’t allow.
The bitterly cold winters...I even had ice on the inside of my bedroom
windows in winter can you even imagine? Numerous animals...no dog but everything
else! You name it I had it from snakes...mice..hamsters..guinea pigs even a pet
white pigeon named Demetrious...yes true! Well I was only around 11 maybe 12
years of age. I trained the said Demetrious to fly down to me from the roof
tops and often timed it as a bus stopped nearby and people would point and look
in amazement. Funny now looking back. Quite the showman...where did it all go so
wrong : )
People leave their marks..scratches on door posts of children's heights
long grown and with families now of their own. We left dates and hand drawn
pictures and scribbles on bare plaster walls many years ago which were covered
with wallpaper and most likely those pencil drawings and dates so many years on
are still there. Still there for someone to come across and discover when they
re-decorate. To lay hidden as some forgotten time capsule of memories.
Memories of a home filled with love, laughter and maybe some tears.
Looking back at street names has uncovered so many memories for me. Not
that I’m homesick or anything like that but if I went back for a visit I think I
may feel somewhat frightened. Not of being there that's silly I know but not to
have my Mother looking out of the window as I ran home down the hill from school
in the afternoon. Not to have relatives living in the houses that I knew and the
apple tree I bought from the school garden and planted in my Aunts garden not
being there so many years on. It can just be sad I think rather than nostalgic.
Maybe I just haven’t been that brave! I will go back one day and visit those
familiar places again even though I know it will be difficult to see strangers
looking out of those very windows I once looked out of.
We, my Parents and I like so many other families, left for a better life
and that has certainly been achieved. My Parents have since passed on. Maybe
that’s why I’m thinking of where I grew up and the many memories.
So do we leave a part of us behind when we move? No matter how much the
house is renovated and walls knocked down does the memory of a struggling family
still linger in the existing structure of the house? The joys and the
heartaches? I think we do leave a part of us behind...I really think we do. How
can we possibly not...
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