"The LA sunset from the backyard of her childhood house."

Returning to my childhood house in LA, I realised the house has shrunk. When my aunt and uncle were out, I decided to try something silly. I kneeled down and began walking around on my knees (on soft carpet of course), and suddenly the house was back to normal size again. As I wandered the house, other than a few unfamiliar objects added, it seemed quite the same from my childhood memory. The colour tone, the smell, the dryness in the air, the touch of the carpet, the walls, the door knobs…and the sound of how the fridge is opened and closed; the sound of summer evenings, of the quietness in insects chirping, intermittently interrupted by cars passing by…I wanted to convince myself that I could almost feel like a child again, but nope, I was just an adult walking on knees.

The house probably didn't shrink, but I have definitely grown taller. Seeing a familiar space from an unfamiliar angle was strange. But what was even stranger was suddenly when my aunt and uncle, who took care of me so dearly in this house when I was a child, did not talk to me as a child in the house anymore. And that was when I realised, when the people embedded in my memory for a space changes, the space no longer stays the same.

I guess we grow old much faster than the space we live in. And childhood doesn't come back when we revisit the place. The place has changed, I have changed. The closest I can travel back to my childhood house is in my own recollection.