The Place I Grew Up

My husband grew up across the street from a castle. Not a really big house or a mansion. An actual castle where Napoleon once lived. As an American, that was hard to fathom until I visited. But it's true. Just the width of a single car lane separated his driveway from the castle wall. My sister's husband grew up in the quaint English countryside. The home of a boarding school my husband once attended. A school with twisty turrets, striped scarves and rugby games. The kind of place an American like me can't help but compare to Hogwarts. By contrast, my sister and I grew up in an apartment complex sandwiched between a McDonald's and the hospital where we were born. It's facts like this that highlight the stark differences in our upbringings. 


Over the holidays my sister and I took our husbands to visit our childhood home. Going back everything felt smaller. I guess that’s typical seeing as we were also smaller when we lived there. The hallways that used to seem like our own private labyrinths have since been repainted dungeon grey and now feel institutional and depressing. Still,  I have fond memories of that place. There were always other kids to play with. I did cartwheels in the grass out front. We played jailbreak and Simon Says by the playground. There was this concrete turtle and monkey bars to climb on. And while it might not be as outwardly appealing as the cobble stone streets our husbands grew up on, it wasn't such a bad place to grow up. 

But it’s always interesting to see a place from your past through the eyes of a person in your present. How much of where we've been informs who we are now? 

I've been watching the UP series. It's a series of documentaries that follow a group of British children every seven years starting when they are seven up until the most recentl film - when they are 56. What an amazing journey. I've only watched through 21 Up but it's already sucked me in. It's fun to imagine what these kids will be like and then to watch them grow up before your very eyes. How much of their lives could they have predicted?

I've always found personal stories like that so interesting. It's why I loved zines as much as I used to and why I can spend hours pouring over the personal blogs of strangers. I love the journey.