A House Without Rooms

Devna Panda

After weeks of meticulously poring over paint swatches, we had teased out our choices. Upstairs, there was a balcony that looked over the living room. From those wooden bars, I had imagined what it would be like to be a trapeze artist who could slash through the air, landing on the suede couch. On this couch, I had finished book after book, discovering my love for words. I felt wholly protected under the elevated ceiling, resembling the feeling of being enveloped in a hug by someone several heads taller than me.

I now walk through the hall, the once deep red walls painted a far calmer, pale yellow. Toys strewn across the carpeted floor—a scene from a child’s imagination frozen in time. With a bittersweet jolt, I realize I no longer recognize the house I grew up in. The place I had spun my first fantasies in now carries someone else’s plans and aspirations. My first memories of sharing a home with my family would now be overshadowed by someone else’s story.

It is a beautiful reality that places and people can belong to someone else after we have evolved past them, and yet, there is a certain quality about this truth that is painful. Is it wrong to wish that things we once loved continue to belong to us even after we have stopped belonging to them? There is a certain comfort in knowing we can revisit something that represents a chapter in our lives, a hope that, in doing so, we may discover the people we once were.