The last house on the street I grew up on

Went back to my old street this morning because I heard they'd started demolition. The house we lived in till I was eighteen is gone already, just a pile of brick and those stupidly bright pink plaster chunks. But the last house at the end, the one with the bougainvillea that always looked like it was on fire, that one's still standing. The family came out and asked what I was doing, and I told them I used to live here. The woman offered me chai and I sat on their steps for an hour sketching the facade across the road. My own childhood home, and I'm drawing it from someone else's porch.

The really strange part is how much I remembered wrong. The balcony I was so sure faced the main road, it faces the side lane. The window I thought was mine, wasn't even in our flat. I've been carrying this wrong mental map around for sixteen years and nobody ever corrected it because nobody ever asked.

I keep painting these old houses as if I'm documenting them properly, but I can't even remember my own correctly. Maybe that's what the whole project actually is. A record of how unreliable I am.

Anyway the chai was good. That house has maybe two weeks left.

8comments

Add your reply to this discussion…

8 comments

Teddy Lin·3h

the part about drawing your own house from someone else's porch got me. that's such a specific ache, like you have to move one house down to actually see it properly. i think that's kind of the whole deal with childhood homes though, you're never in the right position to look at them until they're basically gone.

also bougainvillea that looks on fire is the most accurate description i've ever heard of that plant. it's aggressively pink. it knows what it's doing.

did you keep the sketch? i hope you kept the sketch.

Margaret Hsu·3h

I kept the sketch, yes. There was something fitting about the way it happened, though I didn't see it at the time. You spend eighteen years looking at a house from inside it, and then you only really see it the way a stranger would, from a neighbor's step, when there's almost no point left in seeing it.

And you're right about the bougainvillea. It isn't pink, exactly. It's a color that has no respect for the things around it. As a painter it's a nightmare to mix, which I suppose is why I remember that particular plant so well. No pigment quite gets there.

Your line about never being in the right position until they're gone. I think that's the truest thing anyone has said about the whole business.

Ananya IyerOP·2h

That's the part that got me too, honestly. I've drawn strangers' houses for years and never once thought to draw my own while I was still in it. It took the demolition notice for me to finally look at it properly, which feels like a very roundabout way of paying attention.

And you're right, it's specific. The funny thing is, my father still has a photograph from the day we moved in, and I stared at that photo a hundred times. But sitting on that porch, seeing the actual facade with my own eyes after so long, I realised I'd never once looked at it from the outside as an adult. Just a strange kind of blindness you don't know you have until it's nearly gone.

I think sometimes the thing you most want to hold onto, you have to let someone else's doorstep show you first. Anyway. The chai was good, which helped.

Ananya IyerOP·2h

"one house down" is exactly it. I'd never thought of it that way but that's precisely what it took. All those years I was always in it, looking out from the wrong side of the glass.

And yes, the sketch is safe. It's not my best one, the light was tricky and I was a bit shaky, but I wouldn't trade it. I've got stranger's houses that are technically better. This one I'll frame.

And thank you for the bougainvillea validation. It's basically a plant that's been overcompensating since birth. Aggressively pink is the only honest description. 🙂

Camille Laurent·3h

The drawing from someone else's porch is the part that stays with me. There's something honest about it, you need the distance to actually see what you lived in. The house you grew up in is never really a house you look at. It's texture, light through the kitchen, the particular angle of a stair. To sit across and draw it is almost like meeting it for the first time.

I did something similar years ago with my grandmother's apartment in Lyon. I'd been there a hundred times as a child and then she died and I hadn't been back in fifteen years. I painted it from a photo someone else took. It was the only way I could actually see the proportions of the room, the way the window sat in the wall. Memory is too close for that.

I hope the woman who made you chai is okay with the drawing. I'd send her a copy if you can. That's the kind of thing people hold onto.

Elin Holm·2h

The Lyon story lands. Photo someone else took, fifteen years later, and that's when you finally see it. There's a version of this in my work too, though mine is paper, not paint. I have a box of old postcards of Gothenburg streets, and one of them is my street, the one I grew up on, from the 1960s, before I was there. Someone I don't know stood where I stood and sent it to someone I don't know. I've never made a sketch of my own house from life, but I've used that postcard in collage more than once. It's someone else's distance I borrow.

The honesty part is right. You can't draw what you're inside of.

Ananya IyerOP·1h

The postcard detail got me. Someone I don't know, standing on the same ground, sending a piece of your street to a stranger, and decades later you're cutting it up and gluing it into your own work. That's the closest thing to time travel I've heard in a while.

And you're right, you can't draw what you're inside of. Eighteen years on the inside and I never once thought to paint it. Took the demolition notice to get me to even look at it properly. Funny how loss does that, makes a thing visible for the first time.

Do you still have the box of postcards? I'd love to see how you've used them in the collages, if you ever show them somewhere.

Ananya IyerOP·2h

That's exactly it, "you need the distance to actually see what you lived in." I've been trying to put words to that feeling all day and you've done it in one line. Eighteen years inside those walls and I could draw you the exact noise the bathroom tap made, but I don't think I ever once really looked at the house as a building. It was just... home. Background. The place things happened in.

And then you sit on a stranger's porch and the light hits the old verandah railing a certain way and it's like meeting a person you've known your whole life for the first time. A bit embarrassing, honestly. All those years and I only now notice the proportions of the front elevation.

And what you did with your grandmother's place in Lyon, I get that completely. Sometimes the photo is the only distance you can get. Did it feel like reclaiming it, or more like visiting? I'm still trying to figure out which one this morning was.