I drive past the house I grew up in, but I can never go inside because another family lives there now. I'm in my hometown but feel like a nomad, because that world doesn't exist any more.
You see, It's been four years since my parents sold that house, and two years since they have been divorced.
I've debated writing about it so many times, but never wanted to sound maudlin, or to make my family's pain and guilt worse than it already is. When two people split up after nearly thirty years of a great marriage, only they can say what went wrong.
All I know is that it has created a very bizarre, suspended reality for me. One where my childhood is completely disassociated with the present time, almost as if it still exists somewhere. It wasn't till after I left for college that things changed, so I barely witnessed anything to contradict what I perceived to be my family life. They've tried to make the best of it, and what else can you do?
Lately, though, I have been having these dreams where I am back in the old house. In my mind's eye I can still walk through each room and see things exactly as they were. The extent to which the details are seared in my memory is quite shocking to me. Do the new kids sit on the stone wall in the backyard and crack pecans with their teeth? Do they stare out the window and watch the lizards bask on the flowers my mom planted?
If I had all the money in the world, I would buy that house just so I could turn that key one more time.
Perhaps this is a useless exercise. All I know is that these emotions surrounding my childhood home are some of the most intense I am capable of feeling. These things never leave you.
Is it vain to make a promise that I will never do this to my children? It is so easy to get disillusioned. We the young, with years and years of life ahead of us, brazenly making vows that are being broken by so many we love and look up to, even as we utter them. People so far ahead of you giving up, just as you're starting the race. Clay feet, everywhere.
This is about a house, and about more than a house. As I mourn the loss of that world, I know in my heart that this is the way of it, one way or another. How lucky are those few whose ancestral homes remain an open harbor to them all of their life? For the many, what can we do to keep home in our hearts always?
