Memory Lane

Yesterday I went to visit my Grandmother, which I always find a bit of an odd experience. Not because of seeing Granny herself but because of the walk there. M moved to the house that Granny lives in now when she was two or three years old and all three of her sisters were born in the house. When I walk there I take the same route that M and her sisters took for years, all through school and jobs until they married and moved out. It’s a peculiar sensation to walk up the path next to this wall and know that M walked it for years before me. I always trail my fingers along the warm brick and wonder what the chances are of her fingers having hit the exact same spot on the exact same brick when she was my age. What’s really spooky is that M always seems to phone when I am exactly at the half way point on this wall!

When we were younger and we used to come and visit Granny it used to be passing under this arch way that the excitement used to really get under way. I still stand underneath it and look at that little window and dream on day about living in a turret just like it.

I love the way that this walk makes me feel connected. As though I actually belong to a place. Moving around as much as we did when I was younger made me feel really rootless when I was a teenager. A sensation that came with a whole bag of troubles when I moved back to England for university. But when I am on the way to Granny’s I feel grounded and as though I belong here. When I used to come and stay on my own I used to yearn for a place where I would one day be able to bring my children to visit. To point and say this is where I grew up, this is where everything happened to me, the good and the bad. I used to think that I wouldn’t have that. Having taken G to Spain now I know that isn’t true. I know that Spain is where I will take my children and say see this is where I was young, this is where I became me. To show them the hill I skateboarded down, the trees that we hid in, the corners I cried and laughed on.

However, I have this little corner of England too. This roundabout is a big family tradition. Even now when M comes to visit we have to walk to it especially so that she can walk all the way around it on the wall when she was little. It’s something I’ve done countless times too, and actually did yesterday just so that I could tell M that I did! I hope that one day I can bring my children back and make them walk it too, let their footprints tread in where mine, M’s and Granny’s all have. Because she grew up on one of the roads off here too.

I’m the only one of the grandchildren to have actually lived in her house for a little while. When I came back to England after my mental break in Spain I moved in with Granny for about a month whilst I found a job, a home and my feet again. In fact I was living here when I first met G! I get such a warm feeling when the house comes into view. For someone who felt so flotsam and jetsam for so many years it’s a feeling that I can’t get enough of.