As your grandparents' home got torn down, there's no place you will "come back to" when you return to this island from living abroad now…translated…
Last summer, my daughter took a shot of me in front of her grandparents', home.
There was the two red shingle houses that scattered around, also another, building that was built up later. That was the place where my own grandparents lived their, whole, lives, my father grew up in one of these, red brick houses, and started a family in the, other, I also, spent my first four years of life in one of the two houses.
My father and his siblings had long left home, went into the cities to make a life of their own, after my grandparents passed, the houses became, uninhabited, and slowly, they'd turned into, ruins. There's no resolves over the deeds many years, and the most my father could do, was go back home and check on the places. First, he'd begun, riding his scooter back by the week, then, every other, week, once every month with my mother accompanying him, my younger sister and brother-in-law taking him, and in these past few years, he'd had the nurse's aide too, the group of them, all went, just to head home with dad to sit awhile in front of his, family's, home.
Every time I'd returned to Taiwan from the U.S., my parents told me to bring the kids to visit home again.
Outside the doors of the old home, I'd, told my daughter of my childhood. She'd lifted up her phone, told me, "mom, you should be in a photo op with your old house", as she'd stated, I'd suddenly realized, that I'd, never, thought of, getting a shot at the home I grew up, in.
what became, of that place called, "home"...the remains...photo from online
After the summers, we'd returned to the State. Not long after, came the two red shingled houses getting torn down, I was stumped, where is, this place?
I'd told my daughter, thankful you'd taken that shot of me with the old house.
The next time I go back to Taiwan, will I, head home to see it again?
This is on how things are, changing too quickly, one minute, something was there, and then the next, what you'd known to be familiar, gone, in an, instant, and this is the same with the concepts of home too, one minute, it's there, the next, it got, totaled.
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