It’s Not Your Bedroom Anymore
by John on Feb.17, 2012, under Main Stuff
I had a great time in Sharon today with my uncle and cousin; I don’t get to spend nearly as much time with family as I really want, and even less of that is in the town of my birth, so it was a certainly special day. But it’s getting harder and harder to go back there. It seems like every time I do go back, a little bit more of what made it familiar– what made it home– is gone. It might be something grand, like a handful of shops that we frequented back in the day, or it might be something trivial, like how the local radio station is on robo-pilot on Friday nights instead of their fantastic live DJs. But it’s always something more, and it always breaks my heart.
I remember one of the first times we drove back to the house on Webster St. after Grandma moved into it. Instinctively, I went to the bedroom that had been “mine” when we lived there, only to find that everything had changed. I was inconsolable, because I couldn’t comprehend that it wasn’t mine anymore. I had to let it go.
In some sense, I guess I never did.
February 18th, 2012 on 12:06 am
As you might imagine, I’ve pictured this house I live in so many ways over the years, with different appearances it takes on, that there’s something odd about any of it getting switched around.
For example, of the three bedrooms upstairs, we still call them my sister’s room, my dad’s room, and my room, based on long-standing occupants of them – but they haven’t been the rooms of those respective people in a long time – in my sister’s case, ten years or more. But that’s the kind of thing… if one of us calls for another, and the other comes and just asks ‘Where are you?’ as they try to locate the person, they might say ‘(sister’s name)’s room!’ in reply.
The room I was in before, and am in again – there was a time when I wasn’t sleeping in this room, and I still called it my room and would sometimes instinctively walk in there.