So, my family settled in this little corner of England in the early 1980's. My earliest memory of moving here was rollerskating down the tree-lined avenue near our new house, feeling rather pleased with my ability to do a 360-degree turn. Fast forward to my teens and I fell in love with the boy next door. A short but important sojourn away to University, and I then returned to my home town to be with him. We married a few years later, bought our first house together and since then have had two other houses as we climbed the family and property ladder. In entirety, these moves (apart from Uni) have taken me around in a circle of about a 5 mile radius. When I write that out I realise how utterly provincial that makes me sound and how attached my husband and I both are to this place. He too has barely left. As time has gone on I think I will grow weary of our home town, of the normalcy of it. But actually so far I haven't; it's a really cool place to live, we have the beach and the country. We can get to London in an hour or so and best of all, we are surrounded by our families.
What I do notice though - and this becomes more poignant as Boo enters adolescence, reminding me of my youth - is that the twenty years that have passed seem to have done so ridiculously quickly. Do you ever notice that? Where you feel like something happened a few years ago and in fact realise, dumbfounded, that it was over ten years ago?! I drove past a guy, who for a second I thought was someone I went to school with. Of course my brain didn't compute quickly enough that if that was the case, the guy would be pushing 40, whereas this guy was probably in his late teens. It's like I have time-warp goggles on that only see 1992. The same applies to films - films that we saw at the cinema and are now playing as 'classics' on TV - those films are twenty years old.
So as we get ready to move into the other, new side of our house, my Mum and I have been retrieving old furniture from our shed, cleaning and sanding it down and restoring it for Boo's room. The dressing table that I had as a teen for example, has been given a new lease of life. Strange though, to see the nail varnish stains that don't come out and think of the many hours I spent sitting at that table, growing up, wondering what life would hold. Seeing a full circle from my time to hers. Funny how it goes...
And I figure that this is what we all hope for, isn't it? That life gives us an easy run and there is time and occasion to stop and enjoy it and to reflect on the journey! At least that is how it feels to me.
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