The Importance of Your Childhood Home

When you see it, after some months where you have been busy with tons work in the city, an enormous sense of peace invades you and suddenly the memories that you thought forgotten come back at once.

 

Once you step out of the car, you see the swing that dad hanged from the tree when you were two, and that fall where you almost crack some of your pearly whites comes to your memory, you see that spot in the corner of the house where you gave your sloppy first kiss… and once inside your eyes go straight to that stain in the living room carpet where you spilled chocolate sauce when you jumped off the sofa watching a scary movie with your friends, and you are surprised and moved when you see your mum and dad sit in the same chairs in the kitchen where they used to sit when you lived there, living yours unoccupied. For a moment you feel 10 again and you’ve got watery eyes.

 

And then, you get to your room – that your mum has probably left untouched since you moved out of the house. Old toys on the shelves, that annoying alarm clock on your bedside table that woke you up every morning to go to high school with that loud beeping sound, all your favourite teen books, films and CD’s… You wish you could go back in time to relive those memories.

 

Our childhood home has the power of waking up these precious moments from the past and making us feel young – ok, no, it makes us feel old – and strangely safe. We lived among those walls half of our lives until we decided that it was time to move on. It does not matter if it was a tiny house, in your mind it feels like a palace. And, of course, you want that in the future for your children, your partner and yourself, of course. Somewhere that feels like a home and not just a house, somewhere where you can feel safe and be comfortable. Somewhere where you can make memories, as we all do in our childhood homes.

 

by Sandra Martinez