Yesterday was sort of an anniversary for me, in that it was 48 years ago that I first moved into the house in which I now reside. (Not the one above, which is just for illustration purposes.) June 14th 1972, which was a Wednesday, though we should actually have flitted on Monday 12th, which was when our official tenancy commencement date took effect. I presume it was arranging removal vans for both properties (it was a mutual exchange) on the same day which accounts for the hold-up. We lived here for 11 years before moving to another house in another neighbourhood, where we lived for just over 4 years, before moving back to this one. Regular, long-term Crivs already know all this, of course, having read it (too) many times before in previous posts.
48 years, eh? How can that be possible? I don't even feel like I'm 48, so how can I have moved into this house that same length of time ago? I've pondered before about how staying in the same place you've lived since you were 13 up into advanced adulthood can make your teenage years seem closer to you and not so far distant, but that can have its drawbacks as well as its advantages. You see, when the gap between 13 and 60-plus seems like the blink of an eye through one end of Time's telescope, it likewise seems the same from the other - moreso when all those years have been lived in the same house.
Under normal circumstances, most people will have lived in a number of houses and neighbourhoods (even countries in some cases) between youth and their later years, so there have been regular interruptions in continuity to distinguish the different events over the course of their lives. Add to that different jobs, relationships, marriage, kids and grandkids, and there are numerous signposts to measure how things have unfolded over the years. That doesn't really apply in my case. With the exception of that 4 year blip, my life is pretty much the same as it's always been since I was a youth, making 48 years feel like one big 'now' as opposed to a collection of various little 'then's.
To someone else, 48 years ago may seem like an eternity away, due to the fact that they've crammed multiple and varied experiences into their life, whereas, to someone like me, who hasn't, 48 years doesn't feel like being very long ago at all. (Well, sometimes it does - depends on how I'm feeling I suppose.) How does it feel for you, if you're old enough to encompass 48 years into your span thus far? Was it a 'forever' ago, or does it appear much more recent than that?
I've always derived a certain measure of comfort from obtaining comics, books and toys (and houses?) I had as a kid, because then the time in which I originally owned them doesn't seem that far away. However, perhaps things from our past belong in the past and should stay there so that we have a more realistic concept of the passage of time. When too many items from the past also form our present, the span between them seems almost non-existent, resulting in the illusion that we've gone from child to pensioner faster than a fart from The Flash! (Hey, I just had to squeeze that in somewhere.)
I've always derived a certain measure of comfort from obtaining comics, books and toys (and houses?) I had as a kid, because then the time in which I originally owned them doesn't seem that far away. However, perhaps things from our past belong in the past and should stay there so that we have a more realistic concept of the passage of time. When too many items from the past also form our present, the span between them seems almost non-existent, resulting in the illusion that we've gone from child to pensioner faster than a fart from The Flash! (Hey, I just had to squeeze that in somewhere.)
Another 'anniversary' is looming, in that on August 1st I'll have been back in this house for 33 years. The official tenancy commencement date was August 4th 1987, which was a Tuesday, so we moved in early this time, on the Saturday. Funnily enough, this August 1st will also be a Saturday, so I suppose things have come full circle. I've now been back for 33 years, but, despite being exactly 3 times the duration of my first term of 11 years in the '70s and early '80s, it seems nowhere near as long. I don't think I'll ever be able to get my head around paradoxes like that.
Anyway, I know this post has been another extremely self-indulgent wallow in personal nostalgia, but if you'd like to comment on my meandering musings, feel free to do so - you know where.
I see where you're coming from (just down the road a bit wasn't it?) I often find my mind wandering down similar pathways as the route you've outlined in this post. Not so much in terms of residences, by a quick reckoning I have lived in six different houses and one flat since birth to now, though the first one I was much too young to remember; no, more in relation to having posessions for a long period of time and how that messes with your head. When I spin my chair around from the computer and my eyes look along the spines of the tomes in the bookcase behind me, my gaze often lingers on titles I've had the longest. Even though we are all much older now, well those of us that were born way back in the last century, I feel that hanging onto books, comics, models and the like, in short items that certain others of a differnt mental persuasion are want to tell us we should have grown out of, kinda keeps us feeling young on the inside, despite the impression that guy in the mirror gives!
ReplyDeleteSome books (books, magazines and comics in particular) I can recall when and where I bought them, others not so much, but I do marvel at the fact that I can still hold in my hand an item that I first touched so many years ago when in a lot of ways I was a different person. And here it is, basically unchanged (slightly yellowed pages aside I tend to look after my posessions)after all this time even if I have altered over the same passage of time.
(In regard to the Flash's digestive tract - would that be 'squeezed out'? See, not all that grown up at all!)
I generally find, PC, that when I think back to something I once owned when younger, but don't own any more, then it seems ages ago. However, if I've replaced it, it seems like only a short time since I had the original. And as I've said before, the replacements fill the space of the originals so well that they actually become the originals in my mind - or, at least, I become unaware of the distinction (if that makes any sense). So, to me, it's almost like I tucked the original item (comic, book, toy, whatever) into a cupboard 50 years ago, opened the cupboard door 50 years later, and hey - there it was, where it had been waiting for me all that time.
ReplyDeleteAs for The Flash's fart - he squeezed it out, so I squeezed it in (to the sentence). Thanks for the interesting and thought-provoking comment.
Tomorrow (June 17th) is exactly 18 years since I moved into my current house - I moved in on June 17th 2002, almost exactly 30 years to the day after you moved into YOUR house, Kid!
ReplyDeleteBut, as you know, I have no interest whatsoever in buying replacements for the things I once owned - those things are gone forever and I accept that fact.
It occurs to me that you're missing out on an awful lot with that attitude, CJ - and that can be interpreted either way (clue: an awful lot). However, if we interpret it in the way I mean, then as long as you don't feel that you're missing out, then there's no problem. 18 years, eh? Seems like only last week to me.
ReplyDelete