A house is not just a pile of bricks. It’s a reminder of the life you’ve lived
Some people measure their lives by years; I measure mine by houses. Houses, townhouses, apartments, fourplexes, duplexes, each place bringing to mind a different country, city and stage of my life. When I was growing up, each time we’d move, my mother would say: “It’s just a pile of bricks.” But I’ve learned that a home can be so much more.
Our next place in Canada was a townhouse in North York off the highway where my sister and I shared a room, and my brother got his own. It also had green space and a swimming pool – albeit a public ravine and community pool in a neighbouring development that was a 10-minute walk up the hill. Living here was the first time that I remember feeling like an outsider.
I’m ambivalent about that house, coming at a time when I was nine years old and had started a new school and had to make new friends. I remember it as the place where my older brother and sister had a wild pool party that I wasn’t invited to, where I fought with my visiting grandfather, turning the TV to MuchMusic so that he had to watch the video for the anti-apartheid song,. It was where I noticed my parents’ fighting, heard the money worries and first realized my mom’s health wasn’t great.
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