New

Returning to my grandparents' home after seven years was bittersweet. Everything has changed; much of the time I felt like I existed between the wonder of the new and the ghosts of the old, trying to reconcile the familiar with the unfamiliar, separating the superimposed layers of what my eyes saw and my mind remembered.

It was the first time I'd returned since my grandfather passed away in this house that he built, this adventure that he gave us all. I wanted to feel his presence, imagine his movements, his path through the home, his favourite position with the best mountain view, the table where he would cut paneer with precision prior to selling, the sound of his army boots on wooden floorboards, the nook where he watched TV. Some of these, including the stove upon which I once burned my hand, have been erased. We can't live in memory and time won't stand still, and so much of the old is...just falling apart.

And maybe it's change that helps us cope, rewriting our reminiscence, making us make new memories in the now. The new feeling of space in the kitchen where we can all eat together at once; the new smell of wood shavings and skylights in the roof; the new fairy lights that connect the new cottages that welcome new people into our old little world.