Not Got A Clue

Foolishly, I decided to drive past my childhood home and the surrounding areas.

For those of you who do not know, my childhood home was only recently purchased by a large company who is bringing loads and loads of infrastructure to my hometown. I understand the inevitability and necessity of such things, but that does not mean I have to like any of it.

I drove past the place where my home used to stand; the home my father designed. The home that I still have the blueprints for. The home he built with his own hands, exactly how my mother asked for it to be built.

After he died, it was hard for me to be in that house, even though that is often exactly where my mother needed me to be. It was as if I were standing inside my father’s mind, seeing every design choice, from the plethora of right angles, the symmetry and sharp, modern design as reminders of him, reminders that he should still be living in this house, providing for my mom and my little sister.

What was harder than being in the house was saying goodbye to it forever in January when my mother moved out. I cried more than perhaps I should have. Because it’s only a place. It was only a house. But it was my house once upon a time ago. And I hated leaving it forever. I had dreamed of my kids having sleepovers at their grandparents in that house, of my dad teaching them fire safety and how to navigate the woods around them there. I dreamt of their dad taking them hunting on the land, of them chasing chickens and goats around the garden and yard, since we don’t live in a place that allows the keeping of livestock.

But none of that was to be.

Now, when you drive by, there is nothing. Nothing but empty land and a pile of fill dirt where the house once stood. The only thing left are memories.

I did not expect that as I was driving by I would see one of our neighbor’s homes being actively torn down. An excavator was smashing through walls, glass from the windows shattering everywhere, drywall, siding, insulation all being torn out. And for what, you ask? For a huge data center. For parking lots. For ugly warehouses and fences and gray, brown, and black things to replace the trees and endless fields that used to be there.

I should have turned around and gone to my mother’s to get my kids at that point but I did not. I kept on. I drove past what used to be my favorite place in all the world, a place I would go to seek solace from the teasing of my brothers, the annoyances of a sister 13 years my junior. It did not used to be accessible by road, but that has since changed. It used to be a meadow, one full of tall, tall grasses and wildflowers. Long ago it used to be a farmer’s field, so there were no trees, but I had to trek through the woods for the shortest path there.

It wounded me deeply to see what it’s become. The grasses and wildflowers have been torn up. All that remains are clods of dirt, yellow construction vehicles, the beginnings of a parking lot, and the framing of a warehouse.

I admit my stomach twisted and tears burned my eyes when I saw it. I used to sit in that meadow with my diary in hand, facing the sun as it sank down into the horizon, loving every moment of peace and quiet, knowing if I were still enough, the deer would come from the surrounding wood to graze under the last light of day, that if I were very lucky, a rabbit may dart in front of me before realizing I was there. Once the sun had fully set, the ceasing of birdsong meant it was time for me to go home. And I was never afraid. Even in the dark, I knew my way through the woods well and it never took me longer than twenty minutes to come through the woods, into the clearing of my backyard.

No one will ever have the chance to experience the joy that meadow brought ever again. Because it’s gone now.