Premature Nostalgia

There is a certain feeling associated with driving to your grandparents’ house. For Thanksgiving, for the Fourth of July, anything. You may not have grown up in their house, but the snippets of life you have experienced there are vibrant and driving down those roads bring waves of familiarity.

I haven’t felt that for about two years— the last time we drove to my maternal grandparents’ house in a rental car for a funeral.

I was driving down the road my house sits on, in this summer before my freshman year of college, and I began to feel nostalgic. It was a punch in the stomach for how fast life moves.

In some sense, this house will feel less like home, as I will be visiting it only on holidays and in the summer for the next five years. Eventually “my house” will become “my parents’ house”, and perhaps one day “grandparents’ house”, myself growing more and more distant.

My room will slowly become frozen in time. I will take bits and pieces to my dorm, then apartment, then house, until it is barely recognizable except for the shape or paint color. Just as I witnessed my mother’s childhood room, with her old wallpaper and horse trophies but nothing else. I will, one day, stop adding photos or cards to my walls. One day, this room and house will feel more alien than somewhere else. And that’s okay.