So, my parents have sold our childhood home. It’s not a surprise. For as long as I remember, they’ve always said they’d move somewhere else to spend their golden years. First, they dreamt of settling down in southern France, then, perhaps more realistically because they’re not really adventurous, of buying a single-storey house (“one without all those stairs”). So, the fact isn’t a surprise. But it all happened so quickly that’s it’s leaving me a bit stunned.
They move in a few months before I was born, in the Summer of 1974. If they’d waited a bit, they’d have lived there for 43 years. It was a located in very quiet street on the edge of our hometown. Turn immediately right as you left the house, walk for a couple of minutes and you were in the countryside. Walk ten more minutes and you were in the woods. When they arrived, it was so quiet that the older kids used to play badminton on the street when the weather was fine. I remember lying in bed at night and occasionally hearing a car far away in the distance. With time, I grew so familiar with the neighbourhood that I could picture exactly where it was only by its sound (“It’s in the council estate on the top of the hill… going down the big road… stopping at the crossroads… going past the public swimming pool… turning left aaaaand now going past the house.”).
I was the first to leave to enter university. At first, I’d go back every weekend, from Friday night until Monday morning but very quickly from Saturday afternoon to Sunday evening. By the time I graduated, it was down to once every two weeks then once every three weeks when I started working. So many things to do in the big town. Still, it was a few moments of serenity before going back the daily grind. Reading a book in the living room on Sunday mornings with Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto in the background.
My brother stayed home almost a decade longer but finally got his own place sometime around the turn of the millenium. He stayed in our hometown, however, until a couple of years ago when he moved to a small village dozens of miles away because he had been told that he’d get better job opportunities in that region. Unfortunately, the jobs failed to materialize, he’s on terrible terms with the locals and that’s taken a toll on his health. Since he’s never married, I’m pretty sure that my parents sold the house in a bit of rush to be closer to him.
I went back there last Sunday. I knew the house was on sale but my parents told me that it was actually sold. A dozen persons visited on the first day and they had a great offer almost immediately. Now they’ve started packing. I went upstairs one last time to what used to be my bedroom, then had one last walk in the garden where my brother and I spent so many years playing football. I had a look at the old tree stump from which I used to jump and from which we launched small fireworks once. I looked to the rows of gardens running downhill to my left, with the church spire in the distance. The forested hills, deep green, to my right.
As we were sitting in the car, I realized that I had left a bag in the dining room. I rushed back upstairs, found and grabbed it. Then, I realized that I was actually alone in the house, as my parents were already in the street to see us off. Everything was so still. I took a deep breath. The smell of home, one last time. I made a mental picture of the room then, slowly walked out. And, as I was closing the dining room door, I heard myself whisper “Goodbye, house”.
The new owner is a woman with two young boys, I think. It’s good to know that the sound of children playing will be heard again in the house. They will make their own memories of the place. But, unlike me, they lived somewhere else before. This will not be their only childhood home. I went straight from the maternity ward to my house.
Almost 43 years. That’s a good run.
