I fondly recall a poem we used to read in school. It is "I remember, I remember" by Thomas Hood.
And revisiting my birthplace after almost two decades last week brought such strong feelings of nostalgia that I had to look it up again.
When I stopped at my mother's house,(now occupied by some other family for the last twenty five plus years) tears just fell from my eyes.
I was very young when we used to live there so I don't really remember everything but I have vague memories of standing on the balcony, watching the lights of Kohima town and singing nursery rhymes my mother taught me. Sometimes I used to call out to my father to return home it seems, for those days he was posted in Kohima.
I remember having picnics with my nanny on the lawns of the Government school where my mother taught. I remember the little marked grave downstairs where my poor dead sister lay. Mother kept flowers and swept it clean every morning. I remember running up and down the stairs and my nanny chasing after me, making sure I didn't fall and hurt myself. I remember leaving home and moving to our new home in Kohima. We travelled by night and the journey seemed endless. By then I had another sister for company and mother says we were a noisy lot but always happy. I remember going for walks with mother and dad, me on my father's shoulder. I remember the clipped hedges surrounding government quarters and rock pavements winding through houses around Kohima's Bayavu colony. And in summers, climbing peach trees and catching butterflies with my cousins. I remember spending a season with father while in kindergarten and learning to cook pumpkins and squash. I remember playing big sister to my little cousins and running errands for my older cousins. But most of all, I remember being a happy child, picking fallen cherries in my neighbor's yard and dressing up in my mother's dresses and dancing to the tune of ABBA's dancing queen. Those are the memories I cherish from my childhood.
"I remember, I remember
The house where I was born,
The little window where the sun
Came peeping in at morn;
He never came a wink too soon,
Nor brought too long a day;
But now, I often wish the night
Had borne my breath away!
I remember, I remember
The roses, red and white,
The violets, and the lily-cups,
-- Those flowers made of light!
The lilacs where the robin built,
And where my brother set
The laburnum on his birthday
,-- The tree is living yet!
I remember, I remember
Where I was used to swing,
And thought the air must rush as fresh
To swallows on the wing;
My spirit flew in feathers then,
That is so heavy now,
And summer pool could hardly cool
The fever on my brow!
I remember, I remember
The fir-trees dark and high;
I used to think their slender tops
Were close against the sky.
It was a childish ignorance,
But now 'tis little joy
To know I'm farther off from heaven
Than when I was a boy (girl)."
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