My parents are moving house at the end of the week. Nothing particularly out of the ordinary in that, but they’re moving out of the place where I grew up. They bought it when I was eighteen months old and now I’m thirty-nine. It has always been “home”. Although I’ve seen pictures, I have no memories at all of where we lived previously.
It’s the end of an era, I suppose. This particular house has been a constant for as long as I can remember. It’s where I was raised and formed, where rites of passage were enacted, where I left as a boy and where I’ve continued to return as a man. It’s also very likely that it’s responsible for my instinctive and unquestioning love of all red-brick architecture.
I have very happy memories of the place. If that sounds over-romanticised, I have to qualify it by saying that I went through just as much teenage angst as the next adolescent, that for some of the time I was bored stiff and perceived the capital city to be a better place to live. But the house itself was a place of comfort and security, where I became who I am.
They’re moving to the next village but one. Nowadays, that seems like just down the road to me, though when I lived there it would have felt a long way away. London shrinks your sense of geography, whereas living in the country makes each village seem like a separate independent republic. (Ironic that London is continually portrayed as a collection of pseudo-villages.)
Now is a good time for them to be doing this – not just for them, but for me too. If this was happening a year ago, I think I’d be very unsettled and mournful, weighed down by nostalgia, contemplating the loss of something apparently irreplaceable. My response to their move would have been selfish, negative and unproductive.
As it is, with so much mental de-junking having taken place over the past seven months, I’m untroubled. Continuity, in varying forms, felt like something that supported me for such a long time, but more recently I’ve come to see that in many cases it was holding me back. In more than one area of life, a change has been as good as a rest.
As my mum and dad start the process of putting their belongings into boxes, I’m pleased that I too seem to be able to put their house into a box of sorts. I can now see it as a place where good things happened, nothing more and nothing less. The “loss” is of the theatre rather than the play, the stadium rather than the team. The box, rather than the contents.
To put it more succinctly:
“My home is not a place, it is people.”
-
Lois McMaster Bujold, “Barrayar”, 1991
I remember my parents doing the same thing when I was about 20.
I’m 28 now, and the odd thing is that I still dream in the old house, not in the one they have lived for the last 18 years.
Hello Me. I’m sure the same will start happening to me. I still dream about places where I used to live or work fifteen to twenty years ago.
Is “28″ a typo and you actually mean 38, otherwise I can’t work out your maths
I am always shocked and delighted to see Bujold quoted. I grew up in one house, and have not lived more than 5 years in any one place since. I rather beat the nostalgia out of me.
(Dave sent me.)
Hi Zhoen. Bujold is entirely new to me: I was searching for a good quote on the concept of “home” and up she popped. I picked hers specifically because I liked all of the other quotes of hers on the page. If I was going to buy one of her books, can you recommend a place to start? I like Ursula le Guin, if that helps.
I’ve spotted the mention of 3 Mustaphas 3 in your Blogger profile. Such a blast from the past! I hadn’t thought about them for years, let alone heard them. John Peel used to play them a lot, during my student years. I must seek out some of their stuff.