Home sweet home: A nostalgic visit to my childhood

The Old Almaden Winery, a California Historical Landmark established in 1852, is one of the oldest wineries in California. But at a young age, I only knew it as the public park I grew up with, less than a block away from my old home in San Jose.

It was a place that embodied my childhood — a place where I had raced around the spacious playgrounds on tricycles, then scooters and then roller blades and bicycles, and where I had proudly graduated from the little-kid playground to the big-kid playground.

A few months ago, after eating dinner at a Red Lobster restaurant near the winery, my family decided to pass by its park and pull up to the house we used to live in. As our headlights glinted off a child’s bike on the porch, I wondered what kind of people now lived there, wishing I could simply walk inside and look through the rooms where I’d spent the first 8-and-a-half years of my life in.

At the same time, I was scared that everything would be different and that all traces of my childhood within those walls would’ve been wiped away. If so, then maybe at some point, I wouldn’t even be able to picture what exactly the interior looked like anymore. It was also strange to think that I would be trespassing into a stranger’s home — that I would be the intruder.

Perhaps it’s clichéd to talk about my old home as a place that matters to me, but I came to realize that the home I spent my childhood in was much more than just a building.

I identified the word “home” with a place where I could always return to, and as a place I could relax and freely be myself. We celebrated countless birthdays there, and countless dinners took place at our old wooden table.

I remembered some of the most insignificant daily happenings at that house, whether they were positive or not. I recalled the times when I constantly bickered with my mother about playing piano, when I lost my first tooth to a chunk of bread and when I threw toy soldiers with parachutes from the second floor, only to see them fall behind a piece of furniture and disappear forever.

These “meaningless” events and objects made my home what it was, so it was sad to see my scribbles on the walls painted over before the house was sold to another family, and to watch the furniture being completely cleared out, making the interior look like an entirely unfamiliar place.

But in third grade when it was time to move, the experience not as earth-shaking I had expected it to be. The news that we were moving away never came as a shock, since my parents had been bringing my brother and me on weekly expeditions to look at potential houses for nearly a year prior to the actual moving date.

Strangely, sleeping in an unfamiliar house, eating in an unfamiliar kitchen and being separated from my friends was not nearly as dramatic as books made it out to be. Sure, I missed having stairs in the house, and I missed being able to list the names of the seven eighth-graders in the graduating class of my private school, but otherwise, the transition to Saratoga was quick and mostly painless.

It was only years later that I began to miss my old home more and more. I regretted that we didn’t stay in touch with the family that moved in, and I felt a wave of nostalgia every time I reminisced about the park that was located less than a block away, the local library and even the hill I’d rolled down after my mom decided to give my tricycle an “encouraging” push.

Moving away from that house, I left a lot of things behind, and my life changed in a matter of days. While  recalling arbitrary memories of my earlier childhood, I felt that I never had a chance to fully appreciate my home at the time, and I’m slightly regretful of that.

I’m certain that I’ll be leaving many homes in the future, and settling into new ones, and eventually, I’ll probably stop visiting my very first home. However, even if I’m physically away, I’m sure the essence of my time there will still live on in every tiny memory we made within those walls.