Homes for Childhood

I was reading something the other day that got me thinking about my childhood home.  Actually, it would be more accurate to say it got me thinking about how I don’t really associate any of the houses I’ve lived in as my childhood home.

If you count the home where my parents were living when I was born, we lived in a total of five house before I moved out.  That isn’t really a large number, but at the same time, it is still quite a few. The last house is the one we lived in the longest, from the start of middle school (grade 6) until the end of my five year university career.  Thirteen or so years in one place does tend to lead to fond memories.  When I dream of home, it is there that I dream of.  And yet, I don’t think of it as my childhood home, since I was into my teenage years when we settled there.

Since leaving home, seven years ago, quanta and I have lived in four different places.  We’ve been in the last, a condo we purchased, for just over a year.  My hope is that when we move in a few years we can find a place to settle for a while, a place that the Baby Man will come to think of as his childhood home.  But I wonder if such places exist any more, since it seems everyone seem so intent on upgrading and moving on to the next, bigger place.  Maybe memories of one special childhood home will be rare, and rarer still will be the ability to return to that home and show your children you childhood bedroom.