The house that raised me

Somedays, when I visit my childhood home, and I see the space in my old bedroom where a wall once stood separating me and my sisters' room, it sends waves of past emotions through me, every emotion ever felt in my bedroom hitting me one after the other, no time to react or process.

Somedays, when I visit my childhood home, and I see the yard overgrown, tall enough for me to get lost in it today as a lion would the tall grass of the Savanna, it makes me grieve the childhood I once had, the simplicity of life. Spending my entire childhood in the yard, playing in the dirt, on the trampoline, or coming up with some kind of imaginative “role play” of some show I was watching at the time - me being Sam, my cousin Clover from Totally Spies - and in those moments, I am hit with a heavy collision of nostalgia and disappointment.

Somedays when I visit my childhood home, and I see how much stuff is piled onto the porch, like something from the show hoarders, I am struck with sympathy and pity. I grew up running up and down the porch, skating with my roller blades, and having cookouts on the porch. It was a space for family, for company, a space for welcoming and hosting. And witnessing it become a dark, cold, dreary part of the present is disheartening.

This speaks volumes to me about how quickly things can decay, fall apart without the proper care. And I don’t mean care as in action, I mean care as in emotion. Care like passion.

The house that raised me taught me a valuable life lesson: that without nurture, without care, without touch-ups, things fall apart quickly, they decay into something you don’t recognize, until the memories are the only parts still existing.