The Houses That Built Me…

I was driving the other day and the country song “The House That Built Me” came on. Tears immediately ensued…the song is about going back to the house she grew up in and all the memories and going into the house to look around.

So why the tears? I’ll try to explain…

I am what is coined as a “third culture kid”-by definition “people who were raised in a culture other than their parents’ or the culture of their country of nationality, and also live in a different environment during a significant part of their child development years.”

I have very strong ties to the country I grew up in and as is the case for many of us TCK’s have not been able to travel back there in years. I left the city I grew up in 27 years ago. And while I did go back to Indonesia in 2012 for a midwifery apprenticeship in Bali, I was not able to travel back to Jakarta. I lived in 5 different houses during my years in Jakarta-three of those houses were actually on the same street.

And then there’s the houses in the Philippines…the family townhouse in Manila and my grandparents house up in the mountains. These were our homes when we were on vacation.

Add to those the houses in California…my sisters houses where I spent a lot of time in the summers when we were on home leave.

That’s a lot of houses to consider and go back to. By my count…14 houses, All before I turned 21. Compared to my friends I made when I moved back to the US for college and the people I’ve met since then, I am a nomad. So many of the people I know grew up in one or two houses, some of their parents still live in the same house to this day.

There are a lot of memories from all the different houses that I hold near and dear. Every house was a home for me, every house was special in different ways. Every house a building block.

But if I had to pick one house it would be the house on Lighty Lane. My sisters house. Our family’s Gathering place. It was the central hub of so many things while I was growing up. So many of my memories are centered in and around that house.

This is why the tears…

Last week was the 5th anniversary of the Camp Fire that devastated the sleepy town of Paradise CA. In a matter of hours almost the entire town was burned to the ground. Our Gathering place on Lighty Lane was one of them. It took days to confirm that it was gone. During that time there was a lot of begging God to please spare that one house over the others. Not that I felt it deserved to be saved over someone else’s home but the reality that one of the constants in my nomadic life could be gone was so incredibly painful to process.

We had just been home in June of 2017, we had a big family gathering and visited and laughed til our cheeks hurt. My kids played on the same lawn I did, slept under the same roof, heard the same sound and smelled the pine forest that surrounded us. I am truly thankful they got to see Paradise and the house as it was before the fire. So thankful they got to experience it as I did growing up.

It’s been 5 years since the fire…the town is rebuilding. My sister has since built a new home on the same lot and we had a family reunion there last year. It was an amazing trip and my kids were able to meet cousins they had never met. We truly had a wonderful time at the new Gathering place.

But it was a bittersweet visit for me. My first trip home since the fires. My first time driving through the town that no longer resembled itself. My favorite landmarks are gone…places I knew and loved growing up only identifiable by charred signs or the remaining asphalt parking areas. Swimming in a family friends pool-the only thing spared by the fire from their home that burned-left in pristine working order…

I still picture how it was when I think of my sister’s house. It’s hard to replace that image with how everything looks now. Maybe it’s my grieving process…maybe it’s my brain and heart’s way of protecting itself from sinking back to that pain. Maybe it’s a way of holding fast to those wonderful memories.

The Pictures show 2017 on the left and 2022 on the right. As close to the same views as I could get. I have times of great sadness over the house not being the same sometimes. I can picture so many details of the old house. I hope I never forget those details. They are treasured.

There is now a new house, a new gathering place for our family. While it’s not the same house, its the same love, same family, same crazy, same feeling of home.

Perspective change…it’s not the houses that build us…it’s the homes filled with the love, the laughter, the sadness, the ups and downs and the crazy that do. And while I will always miss the house, I am truly thankful and blessed to have the gathering place and that it will always be home.