One of my most-anticipated destinations on our Road Trip! is my hometown. I haven’t been back there since… I can’t even remember when I was there last. Was it for Christmas, just after my husband and I were married? No, no – I remember eating the top layer of our wedding cake, and that it was a year later than it should have been. (It was not good.) So that must have been 2010.
I lived in the same tiny prairie town for eighteen years. When I was three, before my memories kick in, my parents built a house in the country, on a hilltop overlooking the prairie and fields of wheat. It was the home I lived in until I went off to college, and for summers until I went off to grad school. That’s when I moved in with my now-husband – and I haven’t lived there since.
I still consider it home, though. Its desolate beauty is tattooed permanently on my brain. The sound of the ceaseless wind rushing through the tall grasses and the caragana. The buzz and crack of grasshoppers leaping from leaf to leaf. The way my still-wet hair would freeze into icicles when I ran out to the barn before school to break the skin of ice on the water tough for the horses. The creak and squeak of snow beneath my boots. The way the sun coursed, liquid and golden, through the fields. The enormous bowl of sky, sometimes white or shocking blue, sometimes roiling with thunderheads, streaked with brilliant reds and oranges at sunrise and sunset, and shot through with purples and pinks of the aurora borealis on summer nights. The way the exact same view from the exact same windows was always so comfortingly the same, and yet so vividly different, the way I imagine the sea must be from the same vantage point.
As much as I loved the prairie, I also loved my house. My bedroom was a fairytale bedroom, with a loft and vaulted ceilings and my own bathroom and my own tiny crawl space tucked in behind the closet. The family room was enormous, with soaring ceilings and an entire wall of windows overlooking the prairie and the island mountains in the distance. My father never got around to finishing the basement, and I used to roller skate with my best friend round and round and round the polished concrete floors. We had a “library,” with bookshelves and the piano and a closet full of games. We had a big country kitchen that was open to the family room and a sunken living room decorated in baby blue that we were only allowed to enter on special occasions. The walls of the powder room and dining room were hand-stenciled by my mother.
A few years ago, my parents finally sold the house and moved to the forest. I love the home they’ve built among the trees, mountain ranges standing sentry over their cozy log cabin. But it’s so different from the house, the landscape I grew up in.
I want to show my childhood house to Carla. I want to point out the balcony where the cat used to stick his head through the railing and taunted the dog. I want to show her the peak of the living room ceiling and have her imagine the height of my childhood Christmas trees, so tall we had to secure them to the wall with wire. I want to show her the piece of river slate in the front hallway, shaped like my home state. I want to show her the loft where my kitchen set lived when I was small and where I slept when I was a teenager. I want to take her out to the barn and have her drink in the scent of horse sweat and hay. I want her to stand in our yard – barely distinct from the prairie – and have her listen to the wind and the insects and the distant wail of a train. I want her to sit in the middle of the family room at night while the wind dashes like a wild animal through the screen in the kitchen to the screen in the front door, swirling her in a dark bracing energy that I’ve never experienced anywhere else.
My father talked to the new owner, who kindly agreed to give us a tour when we pass through town. But it won’t be the same. It’s not my house anymore – it hasn’t been my house for more than twenty years. And it doesn’t even belong to my parents anymore. It will be full of someone else’s furniture, someone else’s scents, someone else’s memories. I’m afraid that I’ll walk in and rewrite my own memories of the house with what it has become without me.
You can never go home again. And I’m feeling very wistful about that fact.
This is a beautiful post and I’m feeling these feelings myself (albeit with a slightly different twist).
The home where my parents now live was our family cottage growing up. It was as rustic as they come – no plumbing or electrical. We spent summers using an outhouse, baking in a tiny propane stove, and reading by candlelight. It was idyllic.
Of course I love that they renovated it to become a year-round space. The view is the same and my kids visit the same islands along the lake. But it’s also so different. I check my email and we watch movies at night. No one uses the outhouse anymore (though it’s still on the property!) and instead of washing our hair in the lake, we use a shower. Life was simpler then. Summer felt so different – being off grid gave the experience a flavour that simply can’t be recreated now.
We used to have chairs and an old wood floor where kids could sit with wet bathing suits and not worry about the finish on kitchen chairs or upholstery. And every year I just feel this bittersweet tinge about how as much as I love visiting this spot every summer…it will never, ever be the same. Partly because the place has changed, but also because I’ve changed. Those summers can’t be recreated now that I’m an adult. And as much as I can acknowledge that reality at an intellectual level, it still makes me wistful for the “good ol’ days”…
Also, your childhood home sounds AMAZING!!! And I’m so glad you’re going to get to see it, even if I’m sure the experience will be mixed emotionally.
I was very sad and upset when my parents sold the house where I grew up, even though I was in my 20s by then. I both do and don’t want to go into it now; like you, I’m afraid of how the Now would influence my memories. Sometimes I dream that I’m in the house and it’s different but I know it’s ‘my’ house and I’m trying to find my way around and it’s kind of upsetting. I think my subconscious is telling me to be glad I haven’t had the chance to go back into it! Because I’m not sure I could say no if I was invited in. I don’t have children that I could show it to; I can see how wanting to show it to Carla would be important to you. Well, I don’t know what you should do, but I sympathize!
I’m not sure how I found you, but I’ve been lurking for a bit. Your description of home brought tears to my eyes, and it reminded me of something I wrote years ago about my home by the sea – it feels like the coastal companion to your lovely words:
“Sometimes I think about the West, the wide open space. Sky as far as the eye can see, grasses and field, open wilderness, emptiness, infinity. I know it only from films and photographs, and can simply guess at what the expanse would be like. It doesn’t keep me from imagining.
Then I stop, on the shoreline here on Cape Cod, and stare out over crystalline blue. Sometimes sparkling, sometimes turbulent, sometimes calm and serene. Sky as far as the eye can see, open water, emptiness, infinity. I can guess it might be similar to the vastness of the plains.”
Thank you for sharing – this is so lovely!
How wonderful to have such great memories of the place where you grew up. My feelings about my hometown are so very different… I grew up in a rural area that sounds similar to yours, although there were no mountains (I’m from ND). But gosh I really hated small town life. My parents sold their home 2-3 years ago and I felt nothing! I have great family memories from the home itself but have no need to ever visit the town again… I’m more nostalgic about the lake area where my parents live now since I spent so much time in that area with family when I was growing up so those are where my best memories were made.
My parents gave me boxes of pictures and momentos this winter and I ended up throwing basically every out! It was interesting to go through everything but I didn’t want to hold onto any of the memories… But now that I am a parent, I hope my children have very different feelings about where we live. But we live in a diverse area with endless opportunities to pursue what interests them from sports to music to chess to you name it. So I think/hope they’ll have a vastly different experience from mine. My graduating class has 28 people in it so that tells you how rural the area was! I am careful about discussing my feelings about my hometown, although my parents do understand why I felt the way I do…
All that said, I am glad that returning home is a wonderful and positive thing for you, although it will be bittersweet to visit your childhood home that is inhabited by another family!
Oh, it is sad, isn’t it? To see other people in your space? But I also like the idea of all the things that house has seen, from your family to everyone who has lived there since. I can see what that doesn’t appeal to you, necessarily, as those other people have made changes and covered up what was once yours, but the house itself has all these memories and that’s what I like to think about.
I would love to go back and tour my childhood home! I think that in reality it was a very small house, but it felt giant and it had so many nooks and crannies that were fascinating to me as a child (and might very well still be fascinating to me as an adult).
Oh Suzanne. You know I always love your writing, but this is beyond. It’s so gorgeous and evocative. I can honestly see it all in my mind. Your childhood home sounds idyllic and I would have died for a bedroom like that. What a dream. What an incredible place to grow up in. I can imagine how bittersweet such a tour would be.
I have never been curious to go into my childhood home, but maybe that’s because it’s in the same city I am in now. I have driven past it though. I WOULD like to tour my elementary school though. I wonder if it looks the way I picture it in my mind.
Suzanne! This post is spectacular – with every word, I could envision what you were describing – and I’ve never even been near a prairie.
I get the wistfulness of home though. I would love to visit my old house the next time I go home – but, from what I understand, it really isn’t a safe place anymore – not even to drive by. The Husband just found out that his childhood home is on the market and was able to view it online; he was so excited. He described everything as it used to be and pointed out all the changes the new (now old, I suppose) owners had made.
How nice that the new owners are willing to give you a tour. I think, maybe, despite the changes you will still be awash in memories. Have you heard the song The House That Built Me by Miranda Lambert? If not, Google it. I think it will resonate with you.
You write the description of your childhood home so beautifully. It’ll be really special for you to visit even if its different than you remember. There’s really nothing like specialness of the memories from our childhood home as we get further out from those years. My dad is looking to move out of the family home now since mom passed away away. Every time I visit I am saying good bye to it bit by bit.
This was an achingly beautiful post, and I feel like I just walked through your childhood home with you. Absolutely lovely <3
Love this. A charmed childhood. <3 I hope you will love going back to see it.
Oh the shivery joy of hearing about the prairie. Love. More please! To me, someone who lived in the green humpback hills of Wicklow (also horsey), prairies seem so romantic! Thank you for transporting me there.
Oh, I loved this! You have such a great style; I loved all the details and the way you told the story. And I can totally relate with all of the feelings you described.
It’s posts like these that make me long for you to write a book of essays. You have such a way with words and I would be first in line to buy your book!
I never had a childhood home to make me feel things like these. We moved constantly from apartment to apartment, never staying more than a few years in one place. I have memories attached to certain apartments (especially the one we lived in from the time I was 4-8) but it would be something to have a home I spent my entire childhood in.
I missed this post somehow. It’s very moving. We moved a lot when I was growing up so I didn’t really have one childhood home, but one of the two where we lived the longest (4.5 years, from the end of 3rd grade to the middle of 8th), a Victorian house in a small town in Pennsylvania, is the one that inspires these kinds of feelings in me.
I’m sorry I missed this when it was originally posted. I blame my Georgia road trip and all the stress of getting Reg to his next game plenty early.
Beautifully written. It sounds like you lived in a present day Little House on the Prairie scene. I, too, loved my childhood house. It is so near to where I live now that I can drive by it on my way to places like the ortho.
I do hope Carla gets to take the tour. I think that would be fun for her, while also being hard for you.
Oh, this is so beautiful, and so, so true. I was just with my family and had a brief stop at my childhood home. The pull is strong – as is the desire to see things stay the same. At the same time, though, I find myself hoping that my parents do see the writing on the wall and know when it is (finally) time to leave their house. So I’m conflicted… One thing I love – that will be hard when they leave – is not being able to truly picture them wherever they are in their home. I know this one like the back of my hand… I won’t know their future home(s) the same way. (I am also kind of intrigued by where you grew up – it sounds like it would be my perfect location… :>)
Wow, your childhood home sounds INCREDIBLE, like out of a movie or something. I understand that you feel wistful about it.