Not long ago I showed you pictures of the house where I grew up. When I was ten we moved to a very different suburban neighborhood, to a house that they had built. That’s it at the top of the post. Offhand I would say that’s the way it looked about five years after we moved in. When we moved in there was no lawn, the yard hadn’t been graded, and there were dozens of large fallen trees stacked every which way.
How different was it? The new neighborhood was an upper middle class neighborhood, nearly all of the houses brand new, the families prosperous. Most of the men living there were professionals, business owners, or corporate executives. The old neighborhood was very blue collar, old, rundown houses, all sorts of illegal activities going on (prostitution, gambling, drug dealing). My dad stuck out like a sore thumb.
If you think that I must’ve experience culture shock, you’re right. I loved the new house but I never really adjusted to living there or in the new neighborhood. My siblings think of the new house as their childhood home but for me the old house will always be my childhood home.
