Have you ever returned to the place where you once lived?

I lived with Mom for most of my life, and moved out 8 years ago. Mom sold the house about 5 years ago, and moved in with my brother (she died last year).  The man who bought the house was a contractor, and completely changed the interior, and has been renting it since then. Until I moved out, it was the only place I had ever lived in.

Well, a friend who lives very near the house told me that it was up for sale. When I tried to search it online, I noticed that the town was incorrect (I knew to search for the incorrect town, as people often thought we lived there).  Anyway, I emailed the agent to tell them that I used to live there, and the address should be, etc. They didn't reply, nor change the address, so, a week ago, I repeated the process, but got a phone message from another agent, who asked if I'd like to see the house, since I once lived there. Needless to say, I arranged to do so.

Today, along with DH and my friend, we took a tour of the house.  It was quite emotional for me. Even though the house was tiny and kind of run-down when we lived there, and I had some unhappy memories, my heart is still tied up in this house. I hadn't been in the house since Mom sold it.  It's completely different inside--weird--but  I could see why he did what he did in the layout. Very little is the same, but, when I got to what used to be the master bedroom, and saw the old stone wall, I nearly cried. THEN it seemed like my old house.  The memories came flooding back; I heard my parents' voices (not for real, of course!).  As they are now both dead, I wonder what they would've thought about the "new" house? I didn't want to leave...it was so hard...I really miss my house and all of my childhood memories.  No, I won't buy the house--I knew someone will suggest it!  It's WAY too small for 2 humans and 9 cats, and I love our place. But, gosh, it's so tempting!

I don't like what the guy did with the outside, though. He also ripped out a lot of the landscaping I did many, many years ago.

And the tenants are SLOBS. Junk all over the place, inside and out. The garage is filled from wall to wall; empty plastic carpet cleaner jugs outside, in front. Unmade beds, clothes strewn all over. Stuff all over the breakfast bar. It looks like Hoarders, Jr., if TLC had a show by that name!

When I was in my early 20s I visited my girlhood home (lived there from age 10 to 20), right before it was going to be demolished. Nothing had changed, because no one had lived in it since my mother and youngest sister had moved out of it, since it was unsafe.

When I was in my early 40s I visited the home I lived in for the 6 years of my marriage (when I was in my 30s), it was an old barn we turned into a house. The current owners had made some changes, in fact they had turned the place into almost exactly what I had always envisioned it should be, ideas that the ex did not like, and of course we did it his way.

I am 52 years old and the apartment I live in now is the 12th home I have ever lived in, (plus 4 months homeless) and, having been here 14 1/2 years, this apartment is the place I have lived the longest, ever.

I always wonder what is would be like to live in the same place for your whole life. I have a friend who has lived in the same house his whole life. He is 58 years old, and has never lived anywhere but that house.

PS I revisit other homes in my dreams, unfortunately. I'm always having dreams -nightmares really- I moved back to one place or another and in the dreams I always am thinking, "what was I thinking giving up my nice little apartment and yard to move back here again?" :lol3:

I have!  I have never been inside any of my former homes, but I've been by the house we rented when I was in 1st grade in Charlotte, NC.  My brother, sil and I also went to see the home my family owned in Albany, GA.  It was kind of sad to see the Albany house; we lived there for so long.  It's quite rundown now and the azaleas my uncle and I planted in the front yard are gone.

Yes. I still have friends in the area where I grew up and I actually know the family that bought my parents' old house (I went to school with her). From the outside it looks pretty much the same. The gardens aren't quite as well kept as my mom had them, but since the family there now has 2 kids under the age of 7, I'm not too surprised by that. Inside they've left a lot of it, but change the bedroom colours for the kids. It's actually cute and I had not real feelings of attachment - I'd moved out for the last time about 8 years before mom and dad sod it, so my bedrom had long been converted into an office. It was actually really nice to see a family in there. It was too much work for just my parents, but it was a great house to grow up in and it made me smile to see 2 more kids growing up in it.
 

The last time I visited the old homestead, it was just a vacant lot. Mom sold the place for the property since the house was not a safe place to be. It has been sold several times since then.

I was born on the base at Camp LeJeune, NC; my father was in the Marines. When I was 14 or so, my parents took us back to the base; Dad wanted me to see where I was born. He wanted me to walk around the base. We spent about a week or so in the area and he took me everywhere. When I was born, I had a habit of crying a lot at night. Dad got into the habit of driving me around the base and I'd gradually fall asleep while he drove. Then he'd bring me back to the trailer and everybody would go to bed. One night, around midnight or so, Dad grabbed his car keys and said to me, "C'mon, Pam, let's go!" and he and I drove around the base, just the two of us....just because he wanted to show me where he drove me when I was a baby.  I didn't fall asleep that time.

Before my parents down-sized, they lived in a ranch-type house about four miles or so from us. I've not even driven past their old house. I can't and I bet it's been 5-6 years now, maybe even longer since they left the house. The house is right down the road from Rick's parents, but I don't drive by. I still have their old key on my key ring, too....the realtor wanted all the keys, but I couldn't give mine up. (I'm a wuss)

I lived in a LOT of different houses in Denver, growing up.  I've been back past most of them that I can find.  I did NOT find the one we lived in when I was four and rode my tricycle off the retaining wall around the yard and crashed in spectacular and bloody fashion on the sidewalk below.  I did find the garage apartment next to a church, the old duplex on Santa Fe, the converted chicken coop that has now been torn down and replaced with apartments, the house on Adriatic, etc.  I've been by the hospital I was born in many times. 

I've been by the house in Kiowa, and the ranch out there where I worked for a year in high school.

I've been to the house we lived in in PA.

I've seen the houses in the Gentry, AR, area, that are still standing.

Yeah, my mom moved around a lot.

We've lived in this house for 15 years, now.  Looks like it might work out.

Oh, and we've been past a lot of Dottie's old homes, too, although I doubt we'll ever see the one in Okinawa.  We HAVE been to the place where the one in Nome once stood.
 

My paternal grandparents helped our dad raise us three girls at their homeplace. It was part of a large farm that had been passed down from my great grandfather for about two hundred years now. My dad still owned the portion was was left to him, which was the old homeplace standing on three acres of land. Ten years ago, he deeded it to me and my hubby. We knocked down the old farmhouse because it was not repairable. We built a new brick ranch style home about 2400 sq. ft. and live on the three acres where I was raised. So our home sits in the middle of a big farm. We always have beans, corn or wheat planted on three sides of us. But I love sitting on my porch and watching the tractors in the fields. It is so different than watching my grandfather behind a mule.:lol3:

http://hometryst.com/md/420-fayette-st-02262010-cumberland-md-21502-mls-al7265534/

This is the house I grew up in. My family moved there when I was 3 and I sold it after Mom passed away when I was 34 so I was very attached to it. It was "home". But, I couldn't live in it after Mom and Dad were gone. It just wasn't the same.

The man who bought it was very nice and the inside is pretty much the way I remember it. I don't love the colors he painted some of the rooms, but I love the fact he stripped all the woodwork (used to all be painted white or black). I didn't have the guts to actually take a tour of the house when I heard it was on  the market though. I would probably be an emotional idiot! But, I think it's still for sale, so who knows....

I can't even drive by the last place DH and I lived.  It was there that he asked me out for the first time, had our first kiss (first kiss ever since neither of us dated anyone before each other), got engaged, married and I moved in.  DD was conceived there too.     I cried when we moved out.  I couldn't have been more excited to be buying our first house (the first place was a trailer that DH owned but it was in a trailer park, and not the nicest one) but man...so many memories!!  

What I think will be worse is my Grandparent's houses after those are no longer in the family.  Mom and I moved a few times as I grew up and then moved states and all...so I don't have the same attachment there as I do to my Grandparent's homes.  My Mom came home from the hospital to her parent's house.  My Dad was a toddler when his parents moved in theirs.  They grew up a few blocks from each other.

My sister just recently (like within the last month!) drove by the home in which we grew up. The family moved there when I was 2, and my parents didn't move out until.... 15 years after I'd graduated high school. Friends always called my house the "Hobbit house," because it was little, and built on an undersized lot (the people that used to live on the corner lot built this house in what was their back yard in the 1920s for someone's mom to live in). My parent's bedroom was on the first floor. There were three rooms on the 2nd floor (three kids - I have a brother and a sister) - but the rooms had sloped ceilings, and adults could only stand up in parts of the rooms up there. :lol3: There was one bathroom on the first floor. There was a screened-in porch on the second floor, and a screened-in porch at the entrance. There was a free-standing garage between our lot and the neighbors - we shared the gravel driveway and the garage.

When we lived there, it was a white house with green shutters and shingles.

She took a "drive by" picture to share with all of us. Someone, along the way turned the screened porches into rooms, and raised the ceilings on the second floor - and added an attached (?) garage in the back. The zoning laws must have changed, because at the time, we weren't allowed to add any "permanent" structures to the property.

It's nice to know the home has been loved. :heart2:

This is what it looks like now. I think it's cute! The wrap-around porch wraps around what was the den - above that on the 2nd floor was that screened in porch (off my bedroom). The front door looks like it's still in the same place, just that porch was "added" to the living room. That front porch had a flat roof. My sister and I used to shovel off the snow... I remember one year the ladder fell down ( :dk: ), and we were throwing snowballs at the windows in the den to get my dad's attention. :lol3:



...actually, now that I'm looking at it again, the front door MUST have been moved over to the right quite a bit. Looks like it would have been in the middle of what was our living room. It opened onto the porch, and the entrance to the house was from inside the porch (but I'm guessing that wall doesn't exist any longer).

It'd be fun to see inside. :lol3:

MargeCat said:

I ADORE that house!!!!  Is it 1920's?  I'd love to live there.

Click to expand...

It actually was built in 1912. I thought it was earlier than that. It was a great house to grow up in, and a great neighborhood. There is nothing like soaking in a claw footed cast iron bath tub. It's still for sale....hint, hint