As we continue our countdown of the most popular posts on Mamamia this year – this little one was one of our absolute favourites in the office.
Nat is our site co-ordinator, who first started work as an intern many years ago and has now become one ripper of a writer.
Here she talks about the feelings she had when her parents decided to sell the family home. A lovely Christmas Day read…
by NATALIA HAWK
The announcement comes after dinnertime. Mum turns off the television and asks for our attention.
“We’re selling the house and moving to Queensland,” she says, looking down at the table. There is so much in her voice. Excitement, but mostly apprehension and the sadness that comes with anticipating a big move.
Her announcement doesn’t exactly come as a shock. After working hard for many years, my parents have spent the last few mapping out a long retirement in Coolum Beach with only the sunshine and golf courses for company. Mum plans to finally get herself a dog – someone to give her “unconditional love”, she likes to joke.
My brother and I are happy for them to experience their new adventure. We toast with champagne and then move onto other topics of conversation.
And yet, several hours later, I go to take a shower and find myself in tears, trying to comprehend how we’re possibly ever going to let go of this house – the house I grew up in.
Nat with her Babcia
The house is red brick, with a big cream garage door and a wooden front door. There are tall, pruned trees lining the path to the front door and fairy lights strung across the back fence. Inside, the smell of fresh laundry lingers on the cream walls and enormous windows that flood every room with light.
The house also has ugly tiles that get mossy if they don’t get cleaned with a high-pressure hose, moths that refuse to vacate the pantry and birds that keep dive-bombing the roof and dislodging charcoal tiles.
To the untrained eye, the house is completely unremarkable. A typical suburban family home, surrounded by other typical family homes.
To us, it’s a palace.
Mum and Dad were the ones who designed the house. They migrated to Australia from a communist country at a young age with two suitcases in their hands and no money in their pockets. They lived in a flat that was infested with cockroaches while they worked. And saved. And worked some more.
They had a baby – my brother – who played on the floor with the cockroaches. They worked, they saved, they worked, they saved. The baby grew to a toddler and then to a small child. They moved to a slightly bigger flat and had another baby – me. My grandmother came to Australia to live with us. And once I’d grown a bit too, they thought they’d take all their saved pennies and put it towards building the five of us a house.
They gave me a walk-in wardrobe. They gave my brother a room big enough to fit all his books and games. They gave my grandmother her own retreat downstairs, where she wouldn’t have to navigate too many stairs. They gave us a TV room and a library and a family room and the “Christmas dinner” room where we only ever sit to eat once a year.
The entire house was built especially for us. It’s only ever known our family – our jokes, our arguments, our raging debates after too many flutes of champagne. So how can another family possibly ever live in it?
I step out of the shower and think back to a moment when I was probably about fifteen. I had a few friends over and they wore shoes into the house, despite the no-shoes rule. Mum fussed and stressed that they would scratch the floor, and I became annoyed and embarrassed that she even cared so much. “It’s just a floor!” I said. “It’s not life or death!”
“I care about this house because I know it’s the best I’ll ever have,” she replied quietly.
I turned, and I told my friends to please take their shoes off.
Travel back in time with this ‘Looking into the past’ gallery; thanks Buzzfeed.
Looking into the past
You can also hop on over to our sister site iVillage.com.au for these hilarious recreations of childhood photos.
What’s the story of the house you grew up in?
Comments
6 Comments so far
My parents have had to put our family farm up for sale. I don’t know how to express the empty, terrified feeling of knowing one day it will belong to someone else. One day the only place I can call home, that makes me feel safe and whole, will be gone. It’s unexplainable.
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My dad still lives in the house we grew up in but I know one day he will need to sell and move on
I remember when my first car which had been the family car finally died and a wrecker came to collect it I bawled like a baby remembering how excited we were to get it and how hard mum had worked to afford it.
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The house I grew up in – is still there – complete with my parents. I love it so much, I love the fact that every time I go there, in the bottom drawer is a whole pile of freshly folded face washers.
The mixer is under the bench in the corner.
Mum (and to a lesser extent) dad have kept it in perfect order.
In the winter, it is correct to lie down on the floor in front of the heater and read the paper. Everything is done “correctly” at mum & dad’s house.
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The house I grew up in was irreparably damaged by the 2010 Christchurch earthquake. I still have not been back to see the house or the city. My parents have bought a new house and they are so happy, which makes me happy. I’m very relieved they are safe and comfortable in their new house rather than struggling to hang onto their old damaged house. I lived there from the ages of 8 to 22. Good times – a hilarious sleepover with 5 friends when I was 12; a sixties party that my parents threw for me when I turned 16, the number of dinners my mother cooked for friends and family; many Christmases with relatives now passed on. It was home to me for so many years, and I’ll always remember growing up there.
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I love the photos!
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Yeah, I loved this post too…
This was the house I grew up in: http://kikiandtea.com/2012/03/the-house-i-grew-up-in/
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