Day Three hundred and forty three - In every dream home a heartache

My house is a time machine. Well, sort of - while I can't travel backwards or forwards in time, sometimes there are moments in my house where I feel transported to the eighties. Especially in my kitchen, and doubly so in a winter's morning, with the sunlight dim and filtered through the window, as it hits the inside in just such a manner that there are moments when it's not me who's standing in that kitchen floor, but rather the six or seven year old version of me. While I'm sure that there have been many changes in my house throughout all these decades I've lived here, my house really hasn't changed that much. And the kitchen area might just be the area where there has been the least amount of change, other than some new kitchen appliances that have been purchased throughout the years. 

There's an area of the countertop that was reserved for Claudette, a guest that rented a room here when I was a kid, and who always fascinated me. I can barely remember her, but she was always so very nice to me. And she was the one and only person I've ever known who drank milk of the powdered variety - I tried it once when I was very young and found it very unappealing, and have not felt the urge to try it again in more than forty years. But I see ghosts of the large metal can in which it came, and that was usually resting by the corner where the countertop formed an L. 

This story I'm not sure I wrote about here or not before, maybe I did, though I don't think so. But this powdered milk thing left me thinking for a long time afterwards that a lot of different things could come that way. And sometime before I entered my teens my brother got a chemistry set as a birthday present. It came loaded with test tubes, a couple of beakers, a dropper, a thermometer, and I want to say a Bunsen burner but I don't know for sure, as well as a bunch of chemicals and suchlike. And - God as my witness - I could have sworn that there was one sachet that said 'Powdered Electricity', and of course it made sense to me that such a thing existed - if there was powdered milk, then why not electricity? It all made perfect sense to me. Sometime during that time frame, and this would have been late eighties, my father's business had a stall in the local fair, and in an uncommon act of generosity on his part, he gave me some money, and told me to go to a nearby diner and buy myself some 'powdered electricity' - and boy, did my eyes light up at this! Above all, it validated my reasoning that everything and anything could come in the powdered variety. I took the money, ran to the diner, briefly talked to the owner and said I wanted as much 'powdered electricity' as my money could buy, handed him the money, and then left. I might have waited impatiently for, erm, powdered electricity to be produced by some arcane means, unknown to me. I was but a child, after all, an incredibly gullible child. Eventually, though, I had to come back to the stall where my family was, and naturally, I never spoke of what happened. In fact, it wouldn't even dawn on me until much, much later that a) maybe 'powdered electricity' never existed other than in my mind and that b) my dad had given me the money for me to either save up or go get something I wanted. What a doofus I was. And to be honest, I still am. I still am that gullible kid that so easily believed in anything and anyone. 

It's too late, I find, for some things in me to truly change. Hence the reason for my next step. There is a future ahead full of lessons to learn, and full of ways for me to acquire the balance I need. It is a road, one that I must walk alone, and a road that will not diverge into two. It's the long road north, and soon I start the steps that will take me away. It will not be an easy task, saying goodbye to everything, though to much I'll say goodbye to, it'll be done in secret, and to my heart only.