Memories and Saying Goodbye
Date Thursday, March 28, 2024 - 10:30 PM PST
Topic Illustrations


My father is selling his bungalow and moving to Cwmbran. As silly as it may sound, it feels as though my childhood is going along with it. I have so many memories wrapped up in that place. I actually feel sad, emotionally upset, that it’s going. Writing this out, and remembering certain things has actually made me cry, and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or bad.

We moved there from England when I was four, and it was the third house I’d lived in. Even before we bought it, it was a part of the family – the original owners were my aunt and uncle. I remember visiting them as a small child and having dinner on an oak table, five of us crammed in the tiny kitchen. I remember my bedroom was the smallest in the house, and my uncle would put up a heavy pink blanket over the window each night, so the rising sun wouldn’t wake me. I remember wandering round the garden, avoiding the small swimming pool that was full of coy carp, and picking flowers to make magic soup with. I knew anyone who drank it would be cured of anything.

I remember helping my mother make cakes in the kitchen. The pale blue walls were highlighted under the gleam of a spotlight directed at the counter. I would press icing into the shape of petals, and my mother would piece them together to make roses. I remember the living room, with a faded tan carpet, left over from my aunt and uncle, as my parents didn’t want to pay for a new one, not having the walking accident that I was around. It turned out that I managed to make my mark on the curtains instead, leaving a trail of chocolate milkshake, shaken from a supposedly blocked straw, along one set of curtains, and up the other. That mark is still on the curtains, despite the washings they’ve had. I remember my father leaving the hallway light on while I fell asleep, and telling me that all I had to do was think really nice thoughts, and then those really nice thoughts would become really nice dreams, and before I knew it I’d be asleep.

I remember pulling each cushion off the couch and armchairs and arranging them in a line on the floor, before hurling myself at them in an attempt at gymnastics. I remember my father cutting a hole through the wall separating the living room, and my old bedroom, and feeling happy as it meant I was being upgraded to a bigger room. I remember my mother standing at the kitchen door, waving goodbye as my father drove me to school in his old Vauxhall, with mismatching seats as I threw up in there and the smell wouldn’t leave, so the seats had to. I remember having a loose tooth and finding some dental floss in the bathroom cabinet, tying it firstly to my tooth, then to the door and slamming it. I remember my mother helping me find the tooth after it flew out of my mouth. I remember on Christmas morning, waking up at five o’clock and, taking a toy kitten with me, dancing out to the living room to see how many presents were under the tree, before bouncing onto my parents’ bed to wake them both up. They always smiled when they saw me.

I remember my mother divorcing my father when I was eight. I remember sitting in the space under my bed, where a pull out desk normally sat, and crying so hard I didn’t think I could ever stop. I remember falling asleep under there and being found, hours later, by my mother who held me as I cried some more. I remember hanging over the edge of a fence that separated the area my father lived in from the area my mother lived in. I remember seeing the more than just a plain wooden fence.

I remember packing my things up again when I was ten to go to boarding school. I remember being a year younger than the other children. I remember having a strong welsh accent. I remember being teased for both of those things. I remember still having all my valuable things in the bungalow, and how much I loved going back to it. It was one constant in my life, at a time when everything else seemed rather insubstantial. My mother was moving on with her life, dating sometimes, as well as trying to find a decent job. I was in Monmouth, only a little way up the valley but that distance seemed immeasurable to a ten year old with no way of getting home again.

I remember the bungalow being unchanged two years later when I left boarding school. I remember finding a hole in the back fence and having adventures in a pile of tires in the garage behind the house. I remember being allowed to redecorate my room and choosing floral wallpaper that I will never live down, complete with stickers plastered to my bedside table. I remember the fact that the toilet needed to be flushed three times before it would work. I remember staying up all night on the Internet, creating my first website. I remember helping my father fill in the pool so we could have an area of grass in the back garden. I remember being helped into the dry hole, and throwing the dirt about.

I remember when my mother moved again, this time into Swansea, three quarters of an hour away from my father and the bungalow. I remember how she made me take all of my clothing and books from my father’s house because I wouldn’t be there as much as I would be at her house. I remember finding other way to make my room seem mine again, printing of pictures from the internet of dragons, faeries and other mythical beasts and blue-tacking them to the walls. I remember my father buying me a portrait of an Alsatian because I thought they were pretty. I remember bringing my new puppy, Pepsi, to the bungalow, falling asleep holding her and waking up the next morning next to her, never knowing that my father would take her out for a walk after I fell asleep then return her the next morning before I woke up.

I remember my mother moving once more, this time to Welshmoor, down on the moors: More shifting of my belongings, more decoration, more creating my own space. The bungalow was still the same safe place it had always been, except I wasn’t there as much. I remember my father buying me the things I wanted, to make up for the fact that I only saw him on Saturdays, and that was if I hadn’t made plans with friends. I remember installing a new ghetto blaster on top of the sticker-covered bedside table. I remember the marks left when I spilled blackcurrant juice around it. I remember making space to put a new TV, and getting my father to move my bed around so I could watch it lying down.

I remember moving out of my mother’s house and into my nan’s, somehow it felt fairer this time – not being with one parent or the other. I remember hardly ever going to the bungalow any more. I remember going out with my first boyfriend, and my nan allowing him to spend the night, with the warning that we were to each keep one foot on the floor at all times. I remember wanting to have a bath so badly, because my nan had hers taken out: I asked my father to take me to the bungalow so I could have a bath. It was still unchanged. The bathroom was the same green and cream, it still had the same cracks in the ceiling that fascinated me ever since I took my first bath there. The toilet still wouldn’t flush properly. My bedroom was exactly the same as I left it, down to a book left on the bedside table, half read. I remember curling up in my bed, staring at the ceiling and wanting my father to come and tell me about the really nice thoughts I had to think, just one last time. I remember wandering round the garden the next morning, looking at the turf I helped lay, and the flowers I thought were magical.

That was the last time I saw my bungalow. Oh, I went back there, yet again, but it wasn’t mine any more. My bedroom had been painted yellow, my childhood mistake covered up finally. All of my pictures had been taken down, and a few toys were arranged artificially on the dresser. My parents’ old room had been painted a cold mint green, not the cosy cream it used to be when I’d curl up in between them on early mornings. The bathroom was all new, down to the wooden flooring, white tiled walls and working toilet. There were new curtains in the living room; the ones I’d marked were crumpled in the dogs’ bed. The couch was now cream leather, so new I was afraid to sit on it. The turf we’d been so meticulous about laying had been dug up and replaced with flowers. The memories that had been created in that place seemed to have been painted over, given a new cover and expected to sell to people. Each room I went into brought more memories to my mind, and it yet it was as though they were no more than an echo, or just a faint possibility, because what had been a home, was done up so it was just a house. I grabbed the scarce few of my belongings that were still there, put my memories in with them and left.



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