How Curious Are You About The House You Used To Live In?
How often have you thought about the home you used to live in? How often have you wondered what it looks like now — what improvements or heartbreakingly bad-taste changes the current owners may have made? And how often have you actually sneaked back to take a look? Driven past while keeping your head low to catch a glimpse of a place that retains so many memories.
The British novelist Julie Myerson addressed these questions in one of her recent “Home is where…” columns for the Financial Times newspaper:
“Each time we’ve found ourselves nearby, we’ve either gone out of our way not to drive past our old house or gone out of our way to do exactly that. It all depends on how tired or happy or strong or fragile or just plain curious we’re feeling. Mostly, for me, curiosity (Is the jasmine I planted surviving? Have they re-painted the front door?) wins out.”
Few of us are immune to this urge to revisit the past. Earlier this year, blogger extraordinaire Dave Winer wrote of being in his former neighborhood with time on his hands and deciding to revisit his old home in Woodside — although in his case the home had been razed to the ground leaving only several hauntingly empty acres to contemplate.
Winer is philosophical, though, and remarks: “…it’s great to see that the story keeps evolving even when I’m not there.”
I like his take on the past — that your homes are part of a bigger, ever-changing story. One that is explored, in fact, in a book written by Myerson published a few years ago, “Home: The Story of Everyone Who Ever Lived in Our House”
Childhood homes can evoke particularly poignant memories. The British ska band Madness captured the mood in “Our House” an evocative riff on an early home:
“Father gets up late for work/Mother has to iron his shirt/Then she sends the kids to school/Sees them off with a small kiss/She’s the one they’re going to miss/In lots of ways/Our house in the middle of our street/ Our house in the middle of our [street].”
It can be an emotional subject too — maybe too emotional for some. In the song “Little House I Used to Live in” Frank Zappa is literally lost for words:
Ooh!
La-la la-la-la la-ra-la-la la-la-la
La-la la-la-la la-ra-la-la la-laaaah!
Aynsley Dunbar!
Ya-ya ya-ya-ya ya-ya.. Hoopla!
Oink! Oink!
La la la la . . .
Aah!… [And so on]
As you read this, I am in London and dithering about whether to drive by my old house. I last saw it more than two years ago when we closed the door for the last time and flew off for our Berkeley adventure. I’m not sure I want to revisit it to be honest. What if I see something I don’t like? Why does that matter anyway, now that it’s not my house?
[Photo credit: Woodrow Wilson's childhood home -- QT Luong/terragalleria.com]
