My childhood home

Mary from Owlhaven is hosting My Childhood Home. Memories of the homes we grew up in seem to stay fresh forever, don't they...

I grew up in a happy home. I remember when our house was built. I was 5 when we moved in, I think, and just starting school. My Dad had designed our home, and he was overseeing the building too, so most of our weekends were spent climbing over a building site. We loved that. I remember balancing on the brick walls of the foundation, and imagining the rooms which would one day make up our home. I can also clearly remember the stone chimney being built, and how we helped to place one particular triangular stone.

The great thing about my home was the huge cellar, which was above ground on one side, and below on the other, as the house was built on a hill. We had many band practices down there, and parties too. It also flooded in wet weather, as the house was built on an underground stream, until Dad had waterproofing put in!

I remember my corner room, and being allowed to decorate it as I wanted. I had a space age (for the 1960s!) light, which you pulled down to whatever height you wanted, and the room was turquoise and orange. Do not ask. I loved it. I was a bookaholic as a child, and I still am today, and Dad brought home a library style bookcase which took up the entire wall of my room.

I remember playing tennis in our driveway. I remember hitting tennis balls on the kitchen wall, trying not to hit the huge windows, and dreaming of being the next tennis star. We were one of the first families I knew to have a swimming pool built, and that was because my parents thought it would stop them from having to drive to the beach every weekend in bumper to bumper traffic. I remember that it worked. Our home became the gathering place for all our friends, and instead of driving, Dad had to BBQ for the masses. Repeatedly. People always popped in when passing.

Our home was the centre of all things good. Mum baked a lot, and sewed, and was always creating something new. And she was always there. Christmas nights were for everyone. No-one was ever actually invited... they just arrived, and sometimes there were 30+. All ages, and even after I got married, that continued. Huge buffet meals set out, and children in the pool and running about, Auntie Myra starting the carol singing in her beautiful alto voice, wrapping paper everywhere. And you know, the amazing thing is that every one of those people who used to arrive, still remember those nights as being really special.

When I went to university, I moved into residence, and every weekend, I would lead the convoy of cars back home with all my friends, and we would either lounge around the pool, do Greek dancing in the lounge (causing Dad to go down to the cellar to see if the floor could stand the stamping!) or simply relax. It was that kind of place.

I always wanted a wedding reception in the garden, and that is just what I had. 200 people on a beautiful hot March day. It was the best wedding I had ever been to, until my son got married in Switzerland, and had his reception in my sister's garden.

And my children all learned to ride their bikes in that same driveway. They also had birthday parties there. We only sold the house when my parents had to stay in the UK when my Dad got so ill. They never went home. My sister and I were there to pack it all up and ship it. Now it barely resembles the home we loved. It was modernised, and altered, and added on to and just the chimney looks the same. I can see it on Google maps.

In retrospect, it was a huge house. With a great garden. Space for everyone, and lovely high ceilings. At the time, it was simply home, and the place everyone loved being. Fires in winter, barefoot in the garden in summer, making playhouses out of sun-umbrellas with towels pegged to the sides, the stunning mountain there to see from every window, tall Christmas trees with twinkling lights, and the shrieks from the pool.

Now where on earth did I put the photos?????

PS: Blogger is refusing to put spaces in between paragraphs, and I am giving up trying to outwit it, after 7 attempts.

Time to remember

I am sitting here thinking. The house is quiet, and I had some amusing snippet to share, and then my brain started dwelling on the things filling my heart instead. I am writing this primarily for those of you who know me. In real life, and also my little band of dear blogging friends. And then I will let it go and resume normal random musings, but maybe not for a week or two. If you know me in real life, I don't want to talk about any of this. Not right now.

My days at the moment are all starting with "this time last year...". I keep pushing down the well of emotion and now and then it bubbles up like a geyser. Of Old Faithful-like proportions. I never intended this blog to be an emotional place. I never intended to write about anything other than day to day musings. But then life sort of happens when you are making other plans, doesn't it?

This time last year, today, Geoff was brought home from work because he couldn't breathe. 13 days later, I watched as his life slipped away in the early hours of the morning of the 7th July. As I write, the tears are trickling down my face, and it is not an attractive sight. I remember standing next to him, holding his hand, just watching the blood pressure machine readings dropping lower and lower, and the heart monitor getting slower and slower, and thinking that it was all a dream and that I would wake up soon. I remember looking up and whispering, it is okay. You have fought so hard. You can let go now. We will be okay. Just head towards the light and don't look back.

And then the machines stopped beeping and just made that one long sound. Exactly as they do in hospital TV shows. And it was over.

I remember walking out of the critical care unit at 4 in the morning, and sitting on the steps in the empty car park, wondering how I could phone my children and tell them that their Dad had died. David was at home with one of my friends. Andrew and Ann were in London, and Diana was so very far away in New Zealand. I remember worrying that my mobile phone would have enough battery life left to be able to talk to them all. That I wouldn't be there to hold them when I told them. The hospital was an hour and a half away from home. I remember watching the sun rising as I spoke to each of my children, and to my sister. I remember every single aching second. It is as though it was freeze framed in my mind.

And so, in the space of those 13 days, our lives changed forever. I have written before about how immeasurably different I am today to that woman who sat on those steps that morning, wondering what and how to say the words that no-one wants to have to say. We had never talked about death, or its possiblity. I asked him once if he was afraid, and he said so simply....what is the point of worrying...there is nothing I can do about anything except concentrate on breathing. He was a quiet, simple man, who never complained.

Battling with tidal waves of regrets and sadness, fear, shock and a loneliness that staggered me beyond belief...... I was so unprepared for it all, even though I knew right from that day a year ago today, that he was going to die. I don't know how I knew. I just knew.

But this little family, which is the focus of my life, has made it through the first year. There have been tears, of course. Many, I suspect. But there has also been laughter too. Memories made and shared. There is still a lot to do before we can "move on" (oh, how I hate that phrase). There is an inquest to deal with. It all takes so long. I so want to be at the stage where we can just remember the man, not the medical details or events surrounding his death.

Sometimes I, like all of us, just wish for a brief period when everything works, goes smoothly and there is no more tough stuff to deal with. Sometimes, I lie in bed and everything that is "pending" swamps my mind and overwhelms me. Maybe that is why I stay up so late at night.

But this is not about me. This post is about memories, and about looking, not at how far we have to go, but at how far we have come. I can't change the past. I may wish I had done and said things differently, but I can't turn back the clock, can I. I can't undo any of it.

So for now, I will remember him tossing my babies in the air. BBQing for the family. Watching football. Sailing away...........