a house of one's own
"Time bends and folds and you see the past in the present..." Cozy up with warm (or iced!) coffee and haunt old bedrooms with me, as I wax nostalgic in this essay on childhood homes. :)
Wandering into your childhood home, alone, is stepping into memories playing like film scenes before your eyes. Time bends and folds and you see the past in the present: there’s the corner of the castle you imagined when you were eleven years old and wrapped in your great-grandma’s afghan, which was a ballgown. From those stairs you cast spells, set off into the halls of Hogwarts. Up the steps, a sharp left; and, like a ghost, you haunt yourself in your old bedroom, where the sun bursts through blinds, casting slatted shadows on the walls. Here was your bed, and there was the small TV that played Evita on repeat; even now, the music echoes through time to fill the space.
You move silently from your old room into the next room, which was once your littlest sister’s Paris-themed bedroom, but now serves as a stark white office and guest room. Above you hangs the wagon wheel light fixture — a hillbilly chandelier, you laugh to yourself — and in that instant it’s apparent all the ways things have and have not changed, all the ways you’ve shifted and yet remain. This place was once so crowded and now, its vastness rips you open. You, as a little girl, run down the hallway, giggling, and disappear into the closet, the best spot for hide-and-seek. You follow the hall into the big room, where a younger version of yourself plays make-believe with your sisters, and you choke on the ease with which the three of you once slipped in and out of other characters’ skins, traded secrets. Why do we grow up and become our own families?, you wonder. Why do best friends grow apart like branches on a tree; why do we trade imagination play for Cards Against Humanity at holidays? Nostalgia leads you back downstairs and you catch a whiff of fresh wood; the log house smells as it always has, only before, you couldn’t smell it, and now, the scent of timber’s striking. And then it strikes you, the view outside the kitchen window: the sky’s ablaze in golden pinks and you drink it in and your heart aches for all the sunsets you skipped when this place was home.
But this place is home. Houses are lines on bond paper; homes are patchwork quilts of memories good and bad and just okay that keep you warm on days the cold breeze of longing for the way things used to be blows in. Houses are places you visit; homes are places to which you’re tethered; home is where your heart is. And your heart can be in two places at once, you are learning, as you slowly transform your starter house into your son’s childhood home. The kitchen needs work, but already it’s easy to ignore the bare walls and focus instead on your baby’s awestruck face as he watches the ceiling fan whirl round and round and round while you make your morning coffee. The dining room could use new flooring, but is lovely as it is, decorated in soft, mid-morning light that gently caresses the enormous oak table, inherited from your husband’s grandparents. Will your son drop by in 30 years, walk into this, his childhood home, and see the living room couch, new today, old by then, and remember it as the pirate ship on which he sailed the high seas? Will he remember the beige walls, or will he see the artwork you now intend to hang?
Will he walk through the dining room, heart soaring because that painting of the flowers in the blue vase is still there, as it always has been, and catch a younger version of you, his mother, dancing with the red broom around the kitchen while Strauss’s The Artist’s Waltz plays? Will he miss the silver garland that right now winds like ivy up the banister? Will he haunt the home the way you are haunting your childhood home, and remember the same things you remember, popping in unannounced after work simply to visit whoever is in; popcorn and a movie on Friday nights; front porch conversations about everything and nothing at all; bonfire crackling beneath a starry autumn sky; laughter?
Your childhood home: the scene of teenage tragedies, the setting of your wedding, at one time a cage and now, a place to which you return for quiet, for connection, for the piece of yourself that sometimes goes missing.
You carry your little one through your own home, narrating along the way: This is Mommy and Daddy’s room. This is the basement, which I’m sure you’ll pretend is a dungeon someday! This is the back door to the yard we’ll play tag in when you’re old enough to run. As you share memories not yet made with your son, you hope beyond hope that one day, he will carry his own baby through this very house, narrating along the way: This is where my dad taught me to make salad. This is where my mom taught me to draw. I used to play Run Down in this yard…
You rise each day, thank God for this life, this child, this place to call one’s own. You spend your days working to fill this space with light and love and happiness. Every morning, you wake, carry your son down fourteen steps, heart overflowing as he coos Good morning and hope that one day, this house is as loved as your childhood home.
Katherine Mansfield is a full-time mom and when-she-can-sneak-a-few-minutes-of-writing-in writer who runs on the sheer joy of parenthood, coffee, and nostalgia. first drafts is a free, reader-supported passion project. If you like what you read, consider sharing this piece with a friend who might also like it; tipping the writer; or upgrading to a paid subscription.
This is so beautiful- I can’t believe how perfectly you tapped into those feelings with the memories and looking forward.