When you finally go
back to your old home
you find it wasn't the
old home you missed
but your childhood.
...Sam Ewing
hiraeth
(n.) a homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the lost places of your past. It is a Welsh word. https://mindfullymusing.com/2014/07/25/the-heart-of-hiraeth/
This is a photo of an old postcard that featured my childhood home, taken around 1970. My mom was so surprised and thrilled, she bought up all the postcards she could find. My house is the one between the first and second palm tree with the red brick and bougainvillea climbing up the fireplace.
It is located in what was once a hidden gem of a seaside town in Pacific Palisades, California, a mile from the Pacific Ocean. Yes, it did have a few famous people who quietly lived there when I was growing up like Ronald Reagan, Walter Matthau, Thelma Todd, Vin Scully, James Arness, Richard Boone, Buckminster Fuller, Bill Cosby and David Niven. Now the list of actors who have moved there, taken over the town with expensive shops and built McMansions is a very long list.
My dad had the house built in 1948 with a $12,000 VA loan. An addition was added to the home later, before I was born. It has only had two owners in its 70 years, looks close to the same from the outside and is now worth over 2 million dollars. When I went to my 40th high school reunion in 2012, I knocked on the door and the woman who bought it from my dad remembered my parents and invited me inside. It brought back so many fond memories of a simpler time and a happy childhood.
I couldn't figure out if I should change this to a B&W? However I did use a polaroid film look from Picmonkey. The original postcard was in color so I decided to keep it in color.
What a wonderful thing to have and what a place to grow up! I like it in these colours because that is the colour the postcards of the era were. Very nostalgic.
Lovely capture. What a memorable place for you to visit. The house I lived in and where my parents continued to live up to the death of my dad 8 years ago was pulled down and now is a 6 storey apartment block. I hardly recognise the spot where it stood.
