My Childhood Home

I was tempted to begin this post with the usual crack about not being able to go back home again but it just doesn’t feel right. You see, I am home. This post is being composed from the same bedroom in my parent’s house that I grew up in. Right here, in this very room I planned and plotted a million different schemes.

Here in this bedroom I lay in the dark and dreamed dreams about the life I thought I was going to live. This is where I was when I decided that I wanted to live in Israel. This is where I was when I realized that I was in love with my high school sweetheart. She of course had figured that out long before and was unhappy because I refused to say those three words. This is the same room in which I retreated after I had my heart broken. This is the same room that I lived and died many different lives in.

Except it is not really that room any longer. I haven’t lived here in decades and it shows. There is not one single piece of furniture left from my time, certainly not the very cool flat screen hanging on the wall. I would have died for that one. The office furniture isn’t mine, nor the changing table.

About the only thing that is the same is the wood floor, but even that has been refinished since I was here, so…In the time since I left it has served as a room for the dog, my grandfather’s domicile, a nursery of sorts for grandchildren and now, an office.

The house is quiet now, everyone is asleep. In the old days I would have tried to have arranged to spend the night with the boys or go on a date. During the summer of my college years I might have brought home a girlfriend. Technically she wouldn’t have been allowed to stay in my room, but we would have spent a few minutes in here anyway. It would have been rude not to show her the places that had made me who I was/am.

Now I find myself sitting here dreaming about the future. Some of those dreams are quite different from those I used to have, yet some are not that different. It might not be my room anymore, but there is a quiet familiarity here that I appreciate. The shadows whisper lovingly to me and I can’t help but feel like a piece of me that is missing lives on in this place.