Gone

[sartorias]

The wrench of finding your childhood house gone is something I already have experienced. Well, actually, the house where I spent my teens; my parents moved around while my dad was in college until I was two, then we lived in one part of west LA for ten years. Ten very vivid years--I still have dreams that go back there. That house is still there,

Comments

[shirebound]

That's a lot of house trauma, and it's no wonder that memories are bittersweet. When I went back, as an adult, to see our childhood home, it was an incredibly emotional experience.

[sartorias]

Oh, I bet it was! I hope the good ones outweighed the harder ones.

[shirebound]

It looked so much smaller than I remembered, and other people were living there! So odd. But most of my memories of growing up in that house are good ones. :)

[sartorias]

:-)

[desperance]

My grandparents had a beach house, where they basically lived all summer long and we went down for a couple of weeks when we could. It was great: I'd sit on Grandad's knee and steer his car along the (dead straight) sand road behind the row of beach houses, but we'd never park it in the garage beside the house, because that was full of his boats and fishing gear. We'd get out the log rollers and tug a boat down to the water's edge, and then he'd either row us out or fire up an outboard motor, and we'd fish all day, and as far as I remember we never caught anything but it never mattered because we were in a boat with Grandad. And we'd drag shrimping nets through the surf and catch loads of shrimps, yay us - which my poor mother would then have to boil and peel so we could eat them for dinner. Why are half my memories expressions of guilt?

[sartorias]

Well I guess that was one meal nobody had to buy!

But that sounds so splendid!

[anna_wing]

The house that I lived in as a child was torn down and replaced by a megamansion that filled the entire compound. I have no strong feelings about it, since we left it when I was eleven. I will be a lot more upset about the present family house, since we have been there for more than forty years now. My mother went back to her childhood home, in another country, and discovered that it was now a police-station! They were very kind and let us in to see, but it was a sad occasion too in the same way that you describe.

[sartorias]

A police station! That would be very startling!

I hope the present family house will stay in the family.

[anna_wing]

It would be nice, but I expect that it will be sold, eventually.