to grow up in a place and stay in that place? A couple of nights ago I dreamt about my country house. It was a bungalow, with an open kitchen and a large living room below, and then a long deck that my mother turned into two rooms by putting a large dresser in the middle. My parents bought it when I was 7, and I last played there when I was 12. But those five years of going there practically every weekend were probably the most important in my life. Isn't our childhood, after all, the most important period?
I miss that house, but I miss it because I miss being a child again, being there and then. I wonder how I'd feel if instead of leaving and cutting my childhood, I'd just stayed. Would the places have any less magic for me? Would I search for images of those five years in my memory? Would I long to play cops & robbers, or have a chorizo sandwich, or play with our brand new walkie talkies (was I ten when we got them?).
And will my kids childhood be so meaningful to them?