Remembering The Ordinary

Do you remember when you first moved into your own accommodation? Moving out of you parents house, your childhood home, is usually the massive first step to living an independent life. You carry the memories of your parents house with you to your new accommodation and begin building your own home.

I carried many comforts from my parents home into the various homes I had moved to. I gravitated to similar things that reminded me somehow of my childhood. I think we all do this to some extent. It is like a kind of conditioning we exposed to without even realizing it.

When I reflect on my childhood, the memories that stand out for me were one of great joy and excitement. Christmas time, birthdays and family holidays were always the most exciting. Waking up one winter morning to everything being shrouded in snow was a particularly strong memory.

We have a natural tendency to remember the “highlights” and the day to day memories get packed away requiring a little more effort to recall.

We had been living on our new house for almost five years and we had settled into a comfortable routine that settling down suggests. We had weekly routines like most folk with working during the week and relaxing with the family at weekends. I lived from weekend to weekend, I think most of us do. The weekend was my time to relax, decide on what we would cook for Friday night supper, do the weekend shop and simply enjoy being at home in the wonderful space we had created. There is no getting away from the fact that I loved my home.

During those fortunate five years we had created many memories. The highlight memories that I referred to before. We had visits from my family from England, family and friends barbecues, pools on the grass and of course, Christmas and birthdays. We didn’t have friends over very regularly but when we did we always had such a good time.

So what does the tile of this chapter mean? Remembering the ordinary. It is the ordinary things in life that we usually take for granted. Before October 7th 2023 life was ticking along nicely. We had planned a barbecue that day with friends coming from Tel Aviv. It was our annual get together at the end of the Succot holiday. This was a day we had made many preparations for. This was us living the life we had always lived, doing the things we always do.

This highlight never got to get written in the history of our lives. It never got to take place. Following to total and complete destruction of our beautiful home, we were left stranded in time and space, our world had been torn away from us with no way of it ever being returned. This in itself was very hard fact to accept. 

What I did have left were my memories. As I have mentioned before, I can close my eyes and take a virtual tour around our house. I remember it like the back of my hand. I remember every detail, every object and everything as it was. Not only can I visualize our home, I can feel it and hear it too. Our home still “lives” inside of me. The energy in my memories gives me great strength as well as immense sadness depending on what I maybe recalling at the time. It is the holding on and the cherishing of such memories that are helping me to cope with the new reality which we are facing.

Being On Top Of The World

Remembering how I existed in our home brings back memories of our upstairs balcony. There was a door leading out from the upstairs open studio that led out to a tiny area which overlooked the neighborhood. This was where I used to go to photograph the weather and the beautiful sunsets especially in winter time. I would also photograph the moon from this vantage point. I was so happy that this tiny space existed, I always felt on top of the world being up there. I had a birds-eye view of my garden from up there, I felt like I was king of my castle surveying my lands. This home was indeed my castle.

My cats always begged to go out to this balcony. The only problem was that they would sometimes pop over the roof to our neighbors house. I would sometimes realize that either one or both of the cats hadn’t been around for a while and them suddenly remember that I had let the out upstairs. I would go and check and usually find them waiting outside the door. 

Will I ever feel like the king of my castle again?