i will tattoo my childhood on the part of me that is still growing
Upon reading and, later understanding, the notice that my parents have to put my childhood home on the market, I left the dry winter heat of my old apartment to walk against cutting wind and into one of the richest neighbourhoods in Montreal. Or: between the reading and understanding: there was kleenex, tea, and oatmeal; a hug from my love, a phone call to my best friend; and the image of an aging woman, who looks mostly like me, deliberately passing that red-brick house again and again to look at the grand Linden tree.
When I walked past the Westmount mansions, I thought, fuck these guys and their ease of living, and still admired them. I am always retreating towards shows of wealth, perhaps to spur the feeling of difference – the distance between coveting the object and owning it – which can feel righteous. My mom and I would visit the luxury department stores and put on the voices of the elite while running our fingers through the feathers and silks and sequins.
Soon, the march of time ("development") will likely gut my childhood home. They'll keep the facade and raze the back garden. Of course, they'll tear up the creaky old floors, re-do the windows, renovate the dusty basement, re-paint.
"Re-"
again; back; anew; against.
Even though these griefs are in many ways inevitable (the loss of a home, the death of a loved one), it is hard for us to see, we are inhibited in grasping that, our my grief is built upon others' grief. I am mourning a house built on stolen land. I am wondering if the transformation of this knowledge into understanding will be an act of translation, transposition, or expansion.
Reprieve. Replenish. Re-envision. Remember.
I google for images of the Linden tree to draw on my sternum. I think of the tree in its entirety, the tallest on the street, and how I can't fit it anywhere, how the image of it fails, and how its smell in May will feel farther from me now, even though the tree will remain where it stands. How strange to imagine that I will no longer have the right to sit on my front porch, or to invite anyone to sit with me.
I thought I was not as closely connected to my childhood as some others – maybe because I can't quite remember the feeling of being a child, only the feeling of wanting to grow – but I was wrong, of course. I think the house has been holding it for me. In the gardens my dad created. In the banister and the stairs I used to run up on all-fours. In the pink and orange light that shifts through the stained glass trim. I'm lucky that one place has been keeping it safe for so long. Now I have to find a new place for it.
There are many boxes to sort through.
But we will have a party in the backyard in the late spring, maybe, to say goodbye.
xoxo kid tessa