Last weekend, I was driving through Tarrant and saw that my childhood home was up for sale and empty. I've been wanting to go back through it for awhile now. My parents sold it and moved out 11 years ago--two weeks after Kaytibug was born. My girls are now interested in when I was a little girl. I share things that happened, the way things were and memories with them all the time.
So I went to my mom's, collected her and the girls and we went down to see if we could see in the windows or something. Surprisingly, the doors were unlocked. After yelling out to make sure it was indeed empty, we took our tour.
It was dirty and run down which was sad. It was a nice house when my parents left it. And I guess I was expecting it to be like it is in the movies, like when Scrooge steps back into his past or something and it wasn't that way at all. It definitely was not our home anymore. But there were still traces of my childhood left.
When I was a very little girl, I had the middle bedroom and it was painted bright pink with bright pink carpet. There was still some of that carpet in the closet and the wallpaper was the same in the closet, too--very old, very 50's-60's--it was OLD when I was a kid!
The smaller bedroom I had as a teenager was almost exactly the same! The paneling was still up and even the lion lightswitch plate was still there (it had been my little sister's room before it was mine). I once hung some paper up on the wall to paint and the paint bled through onto the paneling. I remember my parents being so mad because we couldn't get it off. Guess what? It's STILL there! LOL
The carpet in the den was the same, architectural details that my dad built himself were still there--the stone tile above the stove in the kitchen, all the cabinets and countertops he made with his bare hands, the custom bar and wineglass rack, the custom closets in certain rooms, sliding glass doors, the corian sinkless counter in the bathroom, the enclosure for the waterheater (however, for some stupid reason, the waterheater had been moved to another room!) in the bathroom...
When my mom got license for her daycare, the DHR made her put decals on the sliding glass doors so the kids would not walk through them (stupid, I know) but they were still there also. The cross ties my dad laid down in the yard to make a play area and sandbox for my sister were still there and even a pole that my biological father had installed in the backyard near the fence to make a dog pin. I don't think I was even born yet when that was done.
It was all so surreal. Neat but sad at the same time. Sad that it wasn't our home anymore because there are so many warm memories from that house. Sad that someone had let it get in that condition. Sad that the neighborhood has gone so downhill when it used to be such a great place to live and raise a family.
I guess I'm naive to think that going back in it would have somehow transported me back in time to a magical moment. And I'm not saying my life is crap now--it's not, it's wonderful. I guess I'm a tad too nostalgic!
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