The place where you used to live...

"And sometimes you close your eyes/  and see the place where you used to live/ When you were young" - The Killers, "When You Were Young"

These lyrics hit home (as it were) to me every time I hear them.

I think about my childhood home a lot, and I actually dream about it very often.  Even when I dream of something happening in the present time, if I'm dreaming about it taking place at "my house" it's usually my childhood house.

I have many, many memories from the place where I used to live... that tan Dutch Colonial with the blue shutters in the waterfront town of Barrington, Rhode Island.  It was the only home I knew from the day I was born until I was almost 18 years old.

It was where I learned to walk, learned to talk, learned to love...

It was where I made my first friends, my sister and brothers... and then Jessica across the street, and David and Betsy next door.  We would build Lincoln Logs or play on the Space Trolley in my back yard.

It was where I learned to read, ride a bike, swing on a swing-set and climb monkey bars.

It was to that house that we brought my childhood dogs as puppies, which began my lifelong love of animals. Cracker and Carmel were just 8 weeks old when we rescued them and took them home to enjoy a lifetime of love. They taught me the importance of an animal's love and I loved them unconditionally.

My bedroom in that house took the wrath of my pre-teen obsession with sunflowers... I covered my room with sunflower wallpaper, I had a sunflower comforter, sheets and pillowcases.   I had a framed picture of a sunflower on my walls, and basically everything sunflower that I ever found was on my shelves and desk.

My Mom and Dad even planted seeds in the garden below my bedroom so I could look out my window and see sunflowers every August.

In my childhood home, I learned how to get through the break-up of a friendship, how to nurse a broken heart, how to break someone else's heart as gently as possible...

I waited by the phone at that house - and tried to keep the rest of the household off the phone - hoping to get a call from my crushes.  I was picked up at that house for my first "real" date, and got ready there for all my high school dances and proms.

I stayed up late studying for tests in that house, worried about grades there... I applied to colleges, and waited for my future to come through the mail slot of the front door.

When my parents decided to sell the house and move a few towns over the summer after I graduated high school, I really wasn't sad.  I loved our house and knew how special it was to me and my childhood, but I realized that my life was entering another chapter.

I was about to turn 18, I was heading off to college, and leaving my childhood home behind was just another step toward adulthood for me.  It was time to make new memories in new places.

Besides, I must have known deep down inside that I wouldn't be leaving it behind for good...

Six years after we moved out of my childhood home, I went back there once again and made another special memory.

I was dating my husband, Steve, at the time, and we were living together in Barrington. Since we had known each other for 15 years (he is my oldest brother's best friend since middle school), he had been to my childhood home many times.

I came home from work and  he told me that he had a "little surprise" for me. He said he needed to take me somewhere, but the only way he knew how to get there was from my parents' old house.

So, we drove to the house that I had grown up in and parked on the street  outside. I was confused, as he said we were only "driving by" my old house. But he then said that he wanted to bring me inside to take a trip down memory  lane, and that he had actually made arrangements with the current owners of the house to allow us to give ourselves a tour.

I thought that that was the "little surprise", and I was thrilled! So, we walked around my old house... I went to my old bedroom (no more sunflowers!), looked out to the old backyard, and just marveled at all the changes the house had gone through.

Then, Steve and I ended up in my old kitchen.  He started to tell me how much he loved me, and how special our love was, how the house represented a sort of history for us... then, to my surprise, he got down on one knee and asked me to marry him.

And, well, you know my answer!

The last time I went by my old home was a about a year ago, when I attended my childhood friend Jessica's baby shower.  It was at the home of her parents, who still live across the street from my old house.

I said hello to my old house (now dark green with black shutters) and thought about how I became who I am there.

In some ways, it seems like I lived there a lifetime ago.

In other ways, it seems like only yesterday I was lip-syncing to a song with my sister in our old living room, playing in the backyard with Cracker and Carmel, or worrying about my complexion in the bathroom mirror before school.

But no matter if I drive by it, or simply close my eyes to see the place where I used to live when I was young, I will always hold close to me all the memories I made there.

- Jane

Comments

[Velma]

My parents are making noises about "downsizing" from the house where they have lived since I was 10, and while I understand that they don't need a 4 bedroom house anymore, it makes me sad to think of not going back there.

[LifeAsIKnowIt]

My parents moved from my childhood house the week after I graduated college.
I haven't been back in 15 years, but I still dream about it and can see every detail in that house.
Lovely post!

[Nina]

I too dream about our apartment in NYC and the house on Long Island where my parents still live...they're in their mid 80's now. Every inch of those places are deep in my memory. That your DH understood the power of home is an incredible blessing.

[Ruth Dynamite]

I still go home to my childhood home, with my childhood neighbors.

It's a wonderful sort of familiarity, and I know I'm blessed.

[Sarah-Trenches of Mommyhood]

My parents still live in my childhood home. I couldn't imagine them living anywhere else! While it's completely redecorated now, the stairs still make the same creaks, the smells are the same, and somehow it seems so much smaller now when I bring my boyz there than when I lived there with my 3 siblings.

[Binky]

That is a romantic and sensitive guy you've got there. I love that story!

[Major Bedhead]

What a lovely story!

When my mother sold the house where I grew up, I was really upset. I loved that house and I still miss it.

[Gruppie Girl]

Your post made me cry. It is beautiful.

Your hubby sounds wonderfully sentimental.