The places where we used to live

This summer, like every summer, I am visiting my family back in France.

My parents have lived in the same house for over 40 years, and although I go back regularly, it often feels like a trip to the past.

There I feel both at home and like a guest. Not that much changes from one visit to the next, but overtime, in small increments, it’s not the same as it was – there are small home improvements, new neighbours, a local shop open or closed.

Most noticeably people change. Nephews and nieces grow up, new babies are born, everyone one else (me included) gets older.

Trips home bring joy and nostalgia, and I wonder about the life I might have had if I had stayed here, instead of moved abroad.

What would life be like if I still lived next door, like some local families do? What if I moved back now?

As well as eating delicious foods and enjoying family reunions, going home is the opportunity to take stock of life so far. What was gained (working, traveling, adulting) and what was lost (a sense of belonging in my hometown).

In London, I have lived in 9 different places since 2002. Last year, when I had enough time on my hands, I felt the urge to revisit those old neighbourhoods.

Starting with the oldest in Bayswater, a touristy area near Kensington Gardens where I lived first in a hostel, then a room in an Indian family’s flat, I took a stroll and photos of the local area.

I was surprised to see that I almost couldn’t recognise any of it. The details I thought I remembered clearly were either long gone, or I had just remembered them wrong.

The same happened in Gloucester Road, where I had moved to next, into a student accommodation. It was pretty, but I couldn’t remember most of it.

At that point I gave up the project.

I am not sure what I had expected, maybe I hoped for some sort of illumination or deep emotions revisiting the past, but I felt nothing at all. Whatever I remembered of those places times was not to be found there, it was only in my memory.

I had forgotten about this aborted project until last month, when I visited an interesting exhibition. In “Walk the House”, Korean contemporary artist Do Ho Suh creates art about his memories of all the homes he lived in, on several continents.

He made a life-size copy of his childhood home, entirely of thin white paper, and creates new homes made of in colourful see-through gauze, from his memories of his different houses.

This art felt dream-like and intimate, the way memories do.

It was good reminder that the places where we used to live, continue living within us. We carry them wherever we go.

They say the past is a foreign country, and for some of us, it is literally.

It’s a country I enjoy visiting – I am always sad to leave, and happy to move on at the same time.