There’s a distinct difference between my childhood home and the one I reside in now. Walking through the familiar and rather eccentric door, alerting the surrounding neighbors of my entrance with its shrieks, I walk through a hundred memories. Fleeting moments occur to me; my favorite hiding place inside the corner cupboard, the pantry once stocked full with the best of treats, now barren and depressing, and the clock set above shelving with a bird specific for each hour, as every grandparent who ever lived seemed to have one in their possession.

I climb the staircase, combing through the books lined along the walls, each caked with years of dust from having not been explored in the last decade. Something about wandering through the home I grew in, failed in, succeeded in- I felt like that child again. Hardly a burden on my shoulders, scouring every nook and cranny of the decrepit hole in the wall. However I viewed it now, taking in account of my childhood and where it led me in my future, it was still my hole in the wall. The nostalgia that creeps into your pores and overwhelms you with a reminder of your own mortality.

Stepping into the attic, I take in the hoard of boxes left to go through, each sagging or ripped in some particular way, and am overpowered by the devastating grief I had yet to acknowledge. The one who cared for me throughout my life, who lifted me up in my deepest trenches, who loved me when I had turned my back, now alive in only those fleeting moments. Curled on the splintered planks, my nails digging deeper into the wood, I am that child once more.