Memories Of Home

Wow! How is it been that long since I've posted something here?

There's another book I've been eyeing at Amazon.com. It is The Tradition of Household Spirits: Ancestral Lore and Practices, by Claude Lecouteux. Looks like something I would really enjoy. And one of the editorial reviews is quoted (by Brian Walsh, for SpiralNature.com) as saying:

In the end Lecouteux makes the point that as modern families give up their attachment to place, they are also losing powerful ethereal presences that energize not only buildings but also generations of people.

For some reason, and for some time now, I have been dreaming of my childhood homes. There were really only two. The apartment my parents lived in at my birth was soon given up due to lack of space. That was when I was a year old. Of course I have zero memories of that place.

They then rented a two bedroom home which we lived in from 1961 until spring of '67. Then my folks bought their first and only home. Unfortunately my parents divorced in 1971. But that house was in the family until my Mom married her last husband (who died several years back) and sold out.

I've been compelled to go back and drive by those two houses (within a few miles of each other) a couple of times in recent years. In fact, I recently downloaded pictures of the houses that I found through Google.

I did all that because something about my past, my childhood homes, the memories of what once was, keeps beckoning to me. The recurring dreams began before I revisited. And these dreams are so vivid that I recall details about the interior of the homes that I wasn't aware I remembered. I'm quite sure I could walk blindfolded through either house - unless the interiors have been changed.

So now I often find myself sitting and staring at the pictures of my childhood homes as the memories come flooding back. Why do I have this psychological need to do this? Why does my sleeping mind keep digging up these long forgotten memories? And it isn't a painful thing at all. Not really. Maybe bittersweet is the best way of putting it.

A Dr. Seuss quote keeps pounding in my mind: "Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened." And I do. And I know that somehow, so much of the man I am today goes back to the boy who was nurtured over the years in those two houses, which were once my beloved home.