Today probably the last I walk around my childhood house. Have not lived their for nearly 4 years now. My parents are getting old and maintaining a large 5 bed room family house is too difficult for them now. I most likely going be the one handing over the keys to the new owner. I don’t usually like to talk about my emotions but this hurts far more then I expect. See old scratchs on the wall from my childhood, marks left by old furniture and my favourite Spot in the garden to love to play around as a kid then just to relax once I got older. The view of my bedroom and so on. I’ll miss it all.
How do you feel about your childhood home?
39 comments
I haven’t seen it in maybe five or six years, and the last time I just took a quick peek because I was in the old neighborhood.
It’s not the house I miss as much as the old path I used to jog on, the park I used to take my dog through, the arcade I went to like three or four times, the transit system, the theaters I used to act in…
I never really adjusted to my new town. It’s where my first dog passed away and where I first became aware of how much everyone drifts apart from each other after school.
Currently in the process of selling it.. parents are less ambulatory.. hard to maintain a 50000 sq ft 3 story, 4 bed, 4 bath, 4 car property when you cant climb stairs, the oldest son is deployed, the youngest works nights.
I felt like I never really had one. My dad was in the army and we moved around, but we settled down into a house after he got out when I was about 12. After I graduated college, they moved again. Felt like it was discarded like trash.
It’s made me more focused on making a “home” for my own kids
I think any place you stay at for a protracted period of time is going to have those kinds of feelings. I definitely felt that way having to leave a couple of places I’ve lived in. You look around and get all the memories of things you did and what happened with people that were there. It’s sad that you’re leaving all of that. The last place I stayed for a protracted period of time is in a place where I could still go easily, but I know it’d be hard for me to see it given those memories and the circumstances behind why I’m not there anymore, so I kinda avoid going that way. Childhood home is a lot longer departed, but it’s pretty out of the way, so I haven’t had the chance to be there for a while.
But yeah, memories make it hard in any case. I know it’s dead rough on those that I’ve met that were married like 50 years and stayed in that house the whole time from their youth to old age to depart from that. For sure. Just so many memories that they have from living there from their marriage stuff to raising their kids.
We were poor and it was a roof over our heads…that leaked in many places and had flooring rotting in it to the point that garter snakes started poking through the carpet in the laundry room the last year we lived there.
The woods around it were the real appeal.
Melancholic
I changed houses 2 times as a kid so it doesn’t bother me that much.
But my grandfather died two years ago. Three years after his wife. And their house was sold. It was my childhood house for summer breaks. My mother spent her summers there. I passed my summers there. And even my kid spent a few holidays there. My grandfather had given me the keys because he knew it was kind of my home.
And seeing it now emptied with half a roof because people are conducting big renovations… it hurt me so much!
I view it as a comfortable place and future potential windfall.
My parents still live there and we frequently get together to cook out or just talk. I wouldn’t want to take over residency when my parents pass it down, the house is dated and it’s not that close to my wife’s or my job.
It is in a popular area and the property value is substantial, hence the windfall aspect. Either got my parents late stage care, potential rental property, or outright selling it.
Basically had 2 childhood houses.
#1 I genuinely miss, I had so many great memories of playing mini sticks with my brother and dad in the basement, or having birthday parties, etc. it was just a nice cozy house.
#2 I dont miss, it was a small, old, cramped house that we moved into cause financial troubles, it was kind of shitty, the basement creeped me out, while the neighbours were nice they are all gone now (so no reason to go back).
I looked it up on Zillow recently, the only thing that’s really changed is there is a stupid Hawaiian themed mural on the wall. That and both the front and backyard are a complete mess.
My parents sold it when they got divorced, and it was quite sad for me (far more than the divorce – that didn’t bother me). My dad built it all by himself, over a few years, so i always felt there was a lot of him in there.
Since we were not strapped for cash, i told them it might be sensible to hang on to it, and given how much more money they could have gotten a few years later, I was right.
My dad lost his share in bad investments, while my mom used hers to fully renovate her own parents older, smaller and more remote house.
Good job, parents.
A lot of “what ifs?” come to mind. My parents and a relative split a house together, and there was no legally binding document to prove it. Dude kicked us out. Pretty sure he’s a distant uncle or something, but I’ve never forgiven him. His wife has tried to make amends with my parents, but my mom wants nothing to do with him.
People and family make places.
Don’t hang on to it. It will only drag you down.
Not to crap on OP’s post, but I have few good memories of my childhood house. Plenty of dysfunction – Dad’s alcoholism and Mom’s mental health issues. Thus, I was on the receiving end of a lot of emotional / mental abuse (I’m assuming the same of my siblings but I won’t speak for them). I try to live by “my parents tried their best,” but my upbringing has left its mark.
Not that my childhood was an entire trainwreck. I had great friends and was involved in sports. Those things kept me sane.
I moved a few times so I was never too attached to my childhood home. But my grandparents house that was practically my second home from when I was born til I was 17 when she sold it. My grandfather built it himself in the 70s. I drive by it at least several times a week and it makes me sad seeing how much the new owners have changed it the past decade or so. If I ever win the lotto I’d def buy it and turn it back to how it was. They built it for under 40k in the 70s. Now it’s valued over 700k
It’s just a house. The people who live there make it a home. I do remember driving by my childhood home 15 years later and that was a weird experience. It felt almost like vertigo for a second. Somehow it was exactly the same and completely different from how it looked in my memories.
It was a sanctuary.
We moved around a lot but had two main ones that I really “grew up” in. Both got sold off as the family fell apart and were quickly turned into “flippers”. The wild thing I think about is my Dad building the first one as a car salesmen in the 90s, and me not being able to even think about buying the place now.
I haven’t seen it in 10 years, and I haven’t spent more than a night or two in it for maybe 20 years. I don’t really feel a special connection anymore.
I had no problem with it as a kid it was just fine.
I recently went back to see it 25 ish years later. The floor plan was something like 15’x15’
Haven’t seen the inside of mine since about 2004. I’m a little over an hour away so I’ve seen it a few times over the years. Got painted a couple times but still brings back a tremendous amount of emotion to see. After that place my parents were divorced, we all became broke and not much has changed.
Bitter sweet. My dad became rich and built a stunning home in oregon. Unfortunately he became a alcoholic and when my parents got a divorce he sold it. The value of the home now is about 4 million. I often think about how it would have been nice to keep
I really miss it. It was the biggest place we lived in and I often wish I could get rich and go buy it. But at the same time it was in kind of a shitty neighborhood and idk if stuff has improved (likely has in 20 years)
I loved my childhood house, just not the people I shared it with. I would buy it from my parents in a heartbeat.
I love my childhood home it is just my home now, i love seeing my kid do things i use to do. My heart would explode if i ever had to leave it.
Didn’t have one really. Moved quite frequently. Parents never owned a house
My parents moved before and I really felt exposed in my own hometown with no real home to go to. Very odd feeling. Thankfully they mvoed back later.
You’re grieving. It’s a phase of your life, memories – good and bad. Much like shifting from high school to college, or college to full-on adulthood, this is a phase of life as well.
Grieving what has passed us by, and recognizing that the world that was, will never be again.
History likes to rhyme, so we’ll have our times of nostalgia and connection to our childhood, our histories.
But that’s the cost of awareness, I would say. With every passing second, that’s one more second that is behind us. Make the best of the time that you have, because it’s shorter than we all are capable of really understanding.
To be honest, it’s *healthy* to grieve. How you do so, that is entirely your prerogative, and I won’t pretend to be an expert.
But wherever you are today, tomorrow, or the day after – keep in mind, grief is not linear. Today may be easy peasy, but the day after tomorrow might be absolutely heartbreaking. And that’s okay.
It’s okay to feel sentimental. Even as a man. It doesn’t take a single thing from you.
You’re only human, and your thoughts and emotions are valid.
I drive by it almost every time I go and visit. We haven’t lived there since 2007, but I can still picture the layout of the inside and how we had it set up. It just brings back a bunch of memories, both good and bad. It’s crazy going back as an adult and seeing how small the house and yard actually is.
Burnt to the ground in California
We haven’t lived there in almost 20 years..It’s still there..my childhood friends still live around the corner from it so I drive past it whenever I go visit them. I don’t have any feelings about it one way or the other.
the one I lived in until 12 i miss. Was an awesome spot, middle of suburbia but backed onto a large finger of national park that wound through the city. That made for a lot of freedom and adventure as a kid, and I’d appreciate the convenience even more now/. Swimming pool, sports grounds just down the end of the cul de sac, no through traffic to my road or the whole suburb, but 5 minutes drive to a train station. Then we moved to the rural fringes of the city
and it was just isolating, and i think i’d truly hate it even more now for the long commutes.
I love it.
I’m going to miss it when I move out in a month.
But life is all about moving on, y’know?
Filled with shitty memories. Fuck it.
I made the mistake of driving past the house about ten years ago when back in the area I had long ago moved far from. It was in sorry shape when we had kept it so nice. Checked on Google Earth last year and it a total dump with half the trees on the property dead and a junked car in the yard. At least I have my memories.
Fine enough house to grow up in but my sister and I have both agreed that whenever our parents pass, we both want to sell it.
Honestly my parents changed it too much for me to feel really sentimental. I was gone at college for like a month and they turned my bedroom into a home office.
A perfect replica of it is stuck in my brain whenever I dream.
I could be like in a dream going to the mountains of Norway, and then I be like, I need some rest, and enter my childhood room and then there’s mom making some food.
Then my mother shows me actual pictures of it and it’s nothing like my memories, it has changed.
My real childhood house is in my head, the physical version of it is a clump of materials in constant change. I have no attachments.
i’m avidly avoiding it, horrible memories of drug abuse and abuse, while avoiding the house and the addicts, i’ve missed years of my young sisters’ childhood, i know it is just a house, though the thought of it is dreadful
leaves no space for all the good memories from when i was a kid, tough spot
I’ve lived in section 8 living apartments in a closet sized room most my life. I don’t feel anything about it. Now in a studio.