Homecoming

Thank you to Jess for posting and linking to Coming Home, an amazing piece of photojournalism documenting the revisiting of childhood homes.

As a very young child I spent most of my life at my grandparents, but my mind remembers only the times I lived at my parents. Apparently I only lived there for about three months in my whole life, but it felt like it was my entire world.

The house itself was an old villa. A cyan/turquoise colour on some parts of the outside. Old wooden floors. A black toilet seat that frightened me. A shed out in the garden that was not to be entered under any circumstances. I remember there was a kitten who promptly ran away, it had obviously gathered that getting away from that house would be it's best bet of survival. A crocheted bed cover, old records, a mattress on the floor.

I remember a neighbour had a disabled son who I was terrified of, because I was young and didn't understand. I thought he was going to eat me, and remember screaming for my mother to pick me up but she wouldn't. Probably because she wasn't physically strong enough to.

I thought that there was a four poster bed in that house with billowing draped fabric hanging from it, but I think I may have imagined that. I watched MacGyver and Sesame Street on the television.

As a teenager I stood outside that house for a while. It was painted white and had a mobility ramp leading up to the door. I hoped that the people living there now fill that house with the joy that was absent in 1984.