The short paragraphs below are to do with home, place, memory and getting to the root of where the whole thing ties together.

House/Home

We had moved house so many times that I could no longer see a house as a home. I always love going for a walk in the early evening, just as it begins to get dark. That’s the best time to see straight into people’s houses, when they have put the lights on but haven’t yet pulled the curtains. You can tell a lot about a person in that moment, the décor, the placement of books and pictures, what’s on the tv, if they’re alone or not. Little children in pj’s smelling of soap and toothpaste, the lonely crosswording, the warm contented, empty nesters watching spotlight and brewing tea. Messy, minimalistic, dated and dusty and everything in between.

We used to stay up until the early hours scraping wallpaper, sanding down and painting undercoat before we had the children and curtains. the first house was home for five years, long enough for us to have made some stories, birthing, birthdays, loving and shouting. The drive to have more was well and truly set in motion and I got swept away with bigger and so called better. We had rooms we didn’t need or use, furniture placed but not inhabited. In the end I just as empty as the furniture, sad for everything we had left behind, always leaving every labour we had endured for others. Other people who would enjoy the births and birthdays enjoying time, not pressing fast forward as we were. Moving physically and mentally onto the next.

Seven houses and zero homes later and I didn’t know what I wanted anymore. I couldn’t sleep well and for some years I would have a reoccurring, and very vivid dream where I would discover that I had the door key for the first house, the one we were in for the longest, where the children were born. I would let myself in silently, they were out, the new people. I would feel grief stricken with regret, bereft for the possibilities that could have been. Walking around, there are different pictures and objects and displeasingly messy, messy from a busy life, a life busy with people, family, not renovations and conveyancing. Nothing there was mine, except for my longing spirit. Whilst upstairs I hear them return, the new people, I am trapped. I wake up sweating and often crying, actually crying. Not reassured by being awake because I was in sorrow waking and sleeping for home.

I think it goes back even further actually. When I was little, I used to make dens in my bedroom, nothing unique about this playtime activity. But when I look back, I was always home making. I wanted to build a den in the backyard and begged Dad for materials. He laughed and gave me various reasons why it wouldn’t work. A tree house was an absolute dream for me although in our concrete-based streets this was highly unlikely. I made miniature everything, shops, houses, rooms for Sindy. Every toothpaste lid was a potential cup or vase for these small interiors. Later when I was pregnant with Sophie, I made her a dolls house, I actually never let her play with it because it’s really my fetish with its tiny furniture, bedding and real lighting system. I love shutting the doors and seeing the light escape from the windows. Its just like those early evening walks, peering into someone’s private space.

Image; Getty images