Youth - Blogabond

Rested and ready, we drive over to show Mia the house I lived in as a child. My dad's sister lived in it for 40 years after we left Holland for America, and when she died three year ago, my mother sold the place. I remember a brown brick rowhouse, the corner unit with yard on two sides and a separate one car garage, the largest unit in the row...

The smell of freshly cut grass on handmower blades, the smell of algae on the surrounding canals, the terror of lying in bed upstairs as bats dive-bombed the windows, the peaceful majesty of sitting on the living room floor with my sister one Saturday morning as my parents slept, lighting matches because we liked the smell, the opulence of receiving not one, not two, not a few, but the entire set of Okkie learn-to-read books...all these memories sweep in.

I stare at the neighboring house, the house where my friend Wim lived, and wonder what happened to him. I had heard disapproving comments from my parents at one point years ago, Wim in trouble or drifting astray, but who knows so many years later. I am staring at the life I didn't lead. The confidence and optimism and fearlessness I had then...

Mia sees a duck on the street outside, naming him and photographing him within minutes, the duck finally choosing algae in the canal over a movie role. My dad and I once skated on that very canal, following it to a larger canal and then finally out on an adjoining lake...or did that adventure sneak into the panorama of actual memories from my imagination one day, imagination now indistinguishable from reality?

The house looks impossibly small. The new owners have transformed a meager lawn and garden into an opulent terrace paved in brick and surrounded by a wall of ivy. Inside, kitchen and living room are now one room, a wall removed. The garage is transformed into living space, home to an older child. There is no smell of cut grass. I have not lived here in a very, very long time.

written by

roel krabbendam on May 30, 2007 from Maarssen, Netherlands

from the travel blog: Heaven

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