Home is where the hiraeth is

When I graduated from high school, age 17, one of the first things I did that summer of 1974 was hitch-hike back to my childhood town.  I knocked on the door of the house where I used to live when I was a little kid.  I asked the people who lived there if I could take one last look.  They were very nice.  They gave me a guided tour of the whole house.  Every room bringing back a hundred memories.

I lived in that house for seven years from age 5 to age 11.  Which can be a long time when you’re a kid.  We moved suddenly, and inexplicably (nothing in my family history was ever clear) in the summer of 1968 when I was 11.  But I can still clearly see in my mind,  every room, every closet, and every cupboard in that house.  Every nook and cranny.

My bedroom was on the second floor .  From my window I could see our backyard, and the railroad tracks beyond that, and the old brick high school beyond that, with the playground and basketball courts.  It was about as idyllic a view as a little kid could ever want.

I still dream about that house all the time.  I guess my urge to get back there was some kind of return-to-the-womb drive.

 

I Google-searched around and actually came across a photo of my old childhood house. You can see a little bit of it, the house right next-door to this church.