It really is strange to be living back at home again. I was sitting in my mum's room earlier watching TV, and I took a bit of time to actually look at my parents' room, something I really haven't done in a while. And it really is interesting to see a persons room, My mum's got one of those big dressers with a mirror on top. And she's got all sort's of interesting stuff there, pictures along the edges of the mirror, old crafts that we all made for her when we were little. A few souveneirs and things all scattered throughout. I'm tempted to take a picture of it all just cause it's such an interesting collage of my mum's life, and what she considers important.
This house is the same for me. Kinda bittersweet too though. While I absolutely hate living out here and how isolated it is, I love it for the same reasons. I can't just do things on a whim like most other people I know, but I have an entire forest to escape into, acres of fields and land to run around when I have too.
The rooms in this place are the same way. Growing up, I never really liked this place. Therefore I almost never actually had people come over. But now, I look at it, at the possibility that my parents are going to leave and sell it one day, and all I can see is all the history this holds for me. It's like it's soaked into the very walls, as much a part of this place as the floors and stairs. My room now used to belong to both me and Beej, back when we all had to share rooms, the boys together and the girls together.
I can remember nights sitting up with beej and giggling over something we had done, or were planning to do.
I can remember the constant fights over Bryanna's messiness and how I hated being blamed for it.
I can remember sleepovers with the room packed and thinking up pranks to pull before everyone else wakes up.
I can remember games of hide and seek that seemed to always end with either me or beej being in the dryer.
I remember the day I first saw snow after we had gotten back from the emirates, and trying so hard to find enough of it to make a snowman even though there was barely 3 CM on the ground.
I can remember all the years we've decorated that same damn christmas tree with the same ornaments, and getting into fights about who got to switch on the lights the first time.I can remember Christmas mornings and waking up to the smell of mum's cooking and full stockings on the mantel, because it never failed. No matter how early we woke up she was ALWAYS up before us.
I can remember back when i thought having books that were more than 200 pages made me the height of sophistcation.
I can remember days spent running up and down the stairs in our skates to break them in, and invariably falling and almost breaking something at some point.
I can look down at myself and see all the scars from fights and accidents, broken skin and broken bones both.
I can remember mum's scream when she found out I had cut my own hair off because Owen told me it was uneven.
I can remember meeting Kat for the first time, and how she made Drew light up.
I can remember all the little accidents around the house, kicking a hole in the wall, Beej falling off the blacony, Beej breaking the TV, Owen running over things with the lawn mower...
I can remember nights of my dad waking us up at four in the morning to see meteor showers and the northern lights from the back yard.
I can remember rolling about on the waterbeds and fighting over who got them when eventually each of us moved out.
I can remember the summer my dad tried to clean the whole house, inside and out. Redo the floors, shampoo the carpets, and make a bloody big mess for about 4 months while he was at it.
I can't remember a time where there weren't my mum's bateman paintings hanging in nearly every room, looking like widows set into the walls.
I can remember coming home from the emirates to discover that one of our tenants had painted a room downstairs this hideous gree that couldn't be painted over, or wallpapered no matter how hard my mum tried.
I can remember the day the crates arrived back from the emirates, unpacking all the carpets and trying to decide what goes where.
I can remember how we used to drag blankets and a flashlight into the closet so we could read and talk late into the night without our parents knowing.
I can remember the days when I had to get people to get things off the higher shelves for me, and the day when mum had to ask me to do the same for her.
I can remember how almost my entire life hardly a week, sometime's even a day, went by without someone practising an instrument somewhere in the house. My dad's trumpet and my brothers piano and guitars. Mum's flute and bryanna trying everything just to see. And me completely tonedeaf and trying to avoid practising an instrument.
I can remember when the most fun thing I could think up as a kid involved playing keen and duke nukem with my brothers and trying to figure out all the cheats and secrets.
I remember fires in the fireplace and just sitting in the rec room absorbing the heat and watching the flames.
I remember learning how to cook in that kitchen, all the little tricks and recipies both my mum and my dad taught me that have allowed me to make real meals for myself all year.
I remember how me and Beej used to play under the gap under the stairs in the playroom, hiding all sorts of things in little nooks under there.
I remember spending days playing with Lego scattered all across the floor and begging dad for a new set so we could expand on what we built.
I remember all the old clothes and things that we used to play dress up in, much to my everlasting embarassment.
I remember how the sound of a bubbling fish tank in the basement has always seemed so normal, and how I used to fall asleep to the sound of the fish tank in my room.
I remember being scared of the dark and how my snoopy nightlight would make it all better.
I remember how over the years we've managed to break each and every one of mum's good sunday dishes.
I remember days coming home from school, realising I had forgotten my key and having to break into my own house. Kinda scares me how easy it is actually.
I remember how all the souveneirs we dragged back from overseas never really meant anything, but as I went through school I could suddenly come home and look at something we'd owned for years and actually appreciate it for once.
I remember days of playing risk and chess with my brothers, as well as Star Trek monopoly game that Drew made when we were little (Yes I'm that much of a geek, laugh it up.)
I remember sitting around for hours with a where's Waldo book and thinking of it as a day well spent.
All these little things, random memories and thoughts and feelings that i get just from walking around the house every day, I miss it when i'm at school. I love having my own place, but an apartment just isn't the same as the home I grew up in, and I'm really starting to figure that out now. Yes the holidays make me all shmoopy and nostalgic. Shoot me.
Meru at 3:06 AM

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