The creaking boards. The stairway rail. The irregular steps. The smell of the entryway when I first walk in the door. All the same. I cannot understand how this house remains still in time while the rest of the world changes, but yet it does.
Living in the house my Dad grew up in is surreal. This old house is filled with memories of times passed- black and white faces frozen in frames; kissing, hugging, laughing. Many of theme are gone now but these little monuments have sealed their youth. My grandpa too is now a sage, my storyteller who daily relives younger days. During breakfast I am taken away with his tales to India or England. At lunch it is Peru or the seas, and at tea time we remember together the years of this old house. My imagination runs wild and my emotions are a roller coaster. It is so easy to be delighted in an instant, and then I am suddenly tragically nostalgic: for an age I never knew. Still the British Gentleman, he calls me "Ali, my Love," and says words like 'fond' and 'adore' when he is excited. Then we just sit together in silence. Sometimes just in memory, or reading books by Faulkner or Hemingway.
The streets have changed, and the stores are different. The graffiti is is new and bright while the cobblestones are cracking on the street. Everything around has changed. The people inside the house change too, people come and go, are born and die.
But the house still remembers.
My dad and grandparents holding my cousins Pedro and Felipe
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