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| Part of the view from the front step of my old house, taken many, many years after flitting |
There's a woman I know (slightly) who works in one of the shops in my local town centre and who lives in the same street as I did from 1960 to '64. Her family moved in either just before or just after mine, and as far as I know she's lived there ever since. This will be her last full day in the house as she recently sold it, and tomorrow she moves into a flat in another neighbourhood. Apparently, looking after the front and back gardens became just a bit much for her, which is what prompted her to consider downsizing to a smaller domicile without gardens.
I don't remember her from my time there, nor her me, but we probably saw one another running around the neighbourhood back in the day. It was only by chance, during an idle chat when I was in her shop one day, that I learned she stayed in my old street. What must it be like flitting from her family home after more than 60 years and starting all over again? As she's moving within the town, if ever she's back visiting friends, she'll likely pass her old house on occasion, which makes me wonder whether that'll make her miss living there all the more (if she does at all) or derive some kind of comfort from it yet being part of her experience, even if only an external one.
Are there any Crivvies who still reside in the house they grew up in, and would you be able to move elsewhere without suffering some pangs of regret that an era had come to an end after so long a period? I don't think I could handle such a move, and I've only lived in my current home since I was 13 and a half (not all my life), with a four year gap when my family moved to another neighbourhood before returning to our former abode, where we'd previously resided for 11 years. Any thoughts, theories, observations or speculations on this topic are most welcome.
6 comments:
I don't live in the house I grew up in, but my parents are still in the one we moved to in 1980, when I was 11. After moving to a bigger town (midway between Rothwell, where I grew up in and Wellingborough, where my wife grew up), we moved back to Rothwell when my son was born. I love being back and don't think I could move too far away.
My mother died in 2009 and though I hadn't lived in my parents' house for many years I did go back and visit regularly so my mother's death meant my long relationship with the house I'd grown up in from the age of two was finally over. Leaving for the very last time was an emotional moment.
It's funny the way the places of our youth claim us, MW. If you had to move from the house you live in now, do you think, if it became available, you could live in the house you grew up in? Would you want to?
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I can imagine, CJ. Are you ever tempted to go back just for a look at it, or to take some photos? And same question I asked MW - would you (could you) consider living there again if it became available?
No Kid, I've never been back since. And no, if it became available I wouldn't move back again because the house was in a village several miles from the nearest town. I now live in the town centre only a 10-minute walk from the shops which suits me fine.
I occasionally visit ( well drive past) my mum's last house before she passed ( my mum and dad's last house together was torn down a few years ago). Also sometimes I drive past my other old houses. I live in same town my mum did when she passed away in 2013 but would and I am considering moving. I wouldn't move back to other areas where my family stayed but would consider moving back to one of the town's (Rutherglen) I used to live but too a different area of the town. I took one photo of my first house ( showed it on my blog) it's not what it was as the area has gone very much down hill. My only interest in our old houses is for the memory of my mum, dad and brother not that interested in the house itself . But yep, homes of my youth are core to what makes me "me" if that makes sense .
Ach, you're just being lazy, CJ. Think of the exercise you'd get tramping all the way into town from a remote village. You'd be as fit as a fiddle in no time. Or you could always use the bus.
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Makes perfect sense, McS. The only problem in my own case, is that I tend to equate the idea of returning to a former house as also returning to the time I originally lived there, and sadly that's just not the case. As I've said before, if I won the Lottery I'd buy every home I ever lived in - as well as buy a bit of land and build duplicates of them next to one another.
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