Stepping into the door the real-estate agent greeted us, taking our ID and phone numbers. She handed us a piece of paper as we made our way into the lounge room. We left as she repeated the process with the couple behind us. My family and I split up. My dad went straight out the back, my mum to the master bedroom, and I to the bedroom at the back. We knew exactly where to go. Over ten years before we lived there. The floor was tiled then, the walls were purple and there was an island bench in the kitchen. Now the floors were boarded, the walls were white and the kitchen was open. Photos of strangers lined the back walls of the living room, exactly where photos of my own family once hung. The rooms seemed so much smaller. The two car garage where my siblings and I would sit until the late hours of the night, watching T.V and playing the pool table had been walled up. One side was turned into a ‘man cave’ the other kept as a single car garage. The garden where my swing set once stood was grassed over, and even if the bathroom, the bath tub seemed smaller. So many memories haunted me after walking through the house. It use to be my home. Now I couldn’t decide whether it felt as though somebody had taken over my space, or I their’s.

Film:

The film would feature an older woman, looking through the gates of a place she’d once known. Perhaps it’s a house. It would be shown from her point of view, as we see flashbacks from her childhood in this place. The audience would grow attached to these memories, they’re warm and comforting. One particular image shows the woman as a child, baking a cake with her mother, happily making a mess and dipping their fingers in the cake batter. Juxtaposed against these memories will be what the woman sees. Perhaps the wall she used to bounce a ball against has been knocked down. Instead of her mother, a stranger cooks in the kitchen, swatting away her own child who wants to taste what his mother has made. The ‘present’ will feel cold and strange against the warm, almost familiar feeling of the old woman’s memories. However it won’t necessarily be bad, the ‘present’ will simply just show another way that is completely normal to the new family.