Nostalgic

Last week, I discovered that the house I grew up in is being demolished.

It was built in 1933 and my family, grandfather and grandmother, bought it - and many acres of land surrounding it - around 1940 during the second world war; they raised their family there and my mother stayed eventually meeting my father and it was there they raised their family also - that's me and my brothers and sister.

It sold to a developer late last year (for a massive amount of money) and, despite not being on as much land as we had when I was a kid, it's still a huge parcel of land that is going to be divided into over thirty quarter-acre house blocks.

I'll admit to feeling somewhat sad about it. All those memories I have of growing up there, good and bad times, my entire life from birth to the age of seventeen and a half when I moved out of home really...all of it remains with me still; but part of me can't help feel that as they demolish and scrape the land for redevelopment part of those memories will be scraped away also, like the imaginary tether between them and the place in which they occurred is more tenuous with the physical location removed from the face of the planet.

I've been feeling a little nostalgic and have been remembering the moments that made up my life, the trees I climbed, the jumps I made for my bicycle stunts, the little camping nights I had under the stars, building Lego with my dad, the way the kitchen would smell when my mum baked bread, taking the long walk to the road to check the mail box, the smell and sounds of my grandfather's woodworking workshop and the times I spent in there with him as a little kid...so many other memories, and when the wrecking ball and bulldozers are finished with it...it'll be unrecognisable; another housing development with no character - unforgettable in every way.

I'm fortunate to have been born, and raised, in a small and sleepy Australian rural town at a time when Australia was Australian, not inundated with people from all over; it was a good life, adventurous, and with enough scope for me to cause some mischief if I wanted to (and I did). I could leave the house and wander in fields, scrubland, find tadpoles in creeks, build forts and cubby houses, ride my bike and make my way home to the immovable, rock-solid dependable building that I called home. It was a wholesome life and I'm a better man for it now; going back to that town as I do sometimes now well...it's not the same, but the memories bring me back to how it used to be and I miss it.

It's much bigger now, the town. Progress. More houses, many thousands more people, fast food chains, huge supermarkets, multiple schools...and I can't help but get nostalgic about the good old days. And yes, they were good. Better. Much better than they are now.

So, I'm feeling a little sad about my first family home, the house and land upon which I lived my first seventeen and a half years, being erased from existence. Only minutes from that house is where my parents are buried, and my grandfather and grandmother also; they rest a short walk from where their lives played out and it feels wrong that the ground they put their roots down into, the roof that sheltered them and their progeny...me, will be wiped away in a few short days of noise, diesel smoke and caterpillar tracks when the dozers move in.

Do you, or have you, ever felt this way about your past? If you're inclined to comment, please do so below.