My Childhood Home
This is where I grew up with my parents and my older sister.
Neighbors would come and go, but for about 18 years we stayed in this house during the weekday nights & mornings and long weekend days.
This house held our rituals:
- Wednesday Top Ramen “noodle night,” Friday “pizza night,” Sunday bagel mornings with dad
- Hindu ceremonies at the closet altar and at the backyard Shiva Lingam
In our front yard we had a small, non-fruiting pomegranate tree.
Our backyard was wild and grassy until my dad took it upon all of us to implement a regime of black landscaper fabric, pebbles, and a eucalyptus that overgrew its space.
We usually had two cats, a dog, sometimes an aquarium of fish, hamsters, and other assorted pets that did not linger for long.
My sister and I shared a messy room, which we were to have tidied before mealtime.
My parents shared a dark-themed room, with a portrait of a sexualized woman straddling a dragon in an ornate frame at the head of the bed.
A third bedroom was occupied by my mother’s baby grand piano, that she practiced on often.
We were a conflicted family, quick to cry and argue.
Yet, with dinner-time rituals we congregated on the couch to appreciate a fundamental family bond.
