I had a nightmare recently – not about being chased down a hallway or loosing all my teeth – but about a phone call from my parents: the house was being sold. As stupid as it might sound, the idea of a house going on the market left me shaken with a sort of pre-emptive grief. I realised that my foundations: my hometown, my family – my childhood – were slowly fading away from under me as time went┬á by. Turns out your childhood doesnÔÇÖt die on your eighteenth birthday, it crumbles slowly over decades.┬á
As a student, the comfort of the past is still a place I can visit by train. My mum is still there to cook the family a roast dinner on a Sunday, my old bedroom still has the green walls I asked for on my eleventh birthday, and a little dog will leap up from the sofa to welcome me back. For a weekend or so at a time, I can abandon the scary responsibilities of independent life and retreat into cosy dependency, in the town I lived in for most of my life.
But of course, not everything is the same as it was when I was in school. My old friends have begun to drift apart, with new friends, love interests, and ideas away from home. My parents have begun to think about what theyÔÇÖll do when they retire, and what to use our empty bedrooms for. My older brothers recently took the plunge and decided to move out to new places, exciting cities with shops that stay open past four on a Sunday. Whats more, ugly new housing estates seem to have popped up over the semesters and teachers too new to have taught me stand outside the school gates at home time. The childhood which I can travel back to is slowly decaying, as the world moves on and new children find their foundations where I once did.┬á
The worst part about the death of your childhood is thats its indisputably terminal. One day my childhood home will be home to a new family. ItÔÇÖs unlikely me and brothers will ever live together permanently again. The adults from my youth will age and die, old friends will become names on a Christmas card list. My only plan is to keep on getting that train home, and treasuring those people and places that have been with me through my childhood for as long as I can.┬á
Charlotte Harris
