Searching for Something in Our Childhood Homes

New Yorkers anxious after weathering the worst of the coronavirus pandemic are fueling a boom in home sales and rentals around the picturesque towns and wooded hills to the north.

Faith Hill, staff writer at The Atlantic, talks about what people are looking for when they visit their childhood homes, and how it can be stressful, or sweet.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Have any of you listening right now ever gone back and visited your childhood home? We're going to bring on a guest who has just written about this in The Atlantic, and we're going to open up the phones and ask, have you ever visited your childhood home? What was that like for you? 212-433-WNYC. Why did you want to see the physical house, the physical apartment, your childhood home? Did you go back ever years later and look at your childhood home? Why? What was that like for you? 212-433-WNYC.

If you want to call in and tell a story or text us with a brief version of a story. 212-433-9692. Why do we ask? Well, a new article in The Atlantic is titled, Your Childhood Home Might Never Stop Haunting You. It's by Faith Hill. She writes about how many of us feel pulled toward the places where we grew up, but that it can be weird when our old and new selves collide. She explores how our childhood memories and homes are so important in understanding who we are and why. She joins us now. Hi, Faith. Welcome back to WNYC.

Faith Hill: Hi. Thank you for having me.

Brian Lehrer: You start off your piece by reliving the different memories that arise when thinking of your own childhood home. What got you onto this?

Faith Hill: Yes, so my mother still lives in my childhood home where I lived for my whole childhood. She is trying to sell the house, which totally is fair and makes sense, but I feel just so upset by that. I'm almost surprised that I feel that way. I just became very curious about like, why-- We talk about how home is where the heart is and home is wherever I'm with you. That makes sense that people are really what's most important to us. I was just curious why a physical edifice would matter so much to me at all.

Brian Lehrer: In your article, you say that no one's desire to observe or visit their childhood home can be an attempt to pull a thread between past and present. You then refer to it as a common human impulse. How do you think the intersection of the past and the present affects an individual as experienced through seeing their childhood home for the first time in years or seeing it sold as you've been going through?

Faith Hill: Yes, I think it is a weird part of the human condition that we know we technically are one person throughout our whole lives, but sometimes it just feels like we're not like an old self is like a stranger. Your memories feel like watching a movie and it just doesn't feel like you. I think a lot of people want to go back home in order to connect with the past self.

Then when you actually do that, it's really strange. You might realize that it's not what you remembered. It just can be very jarring. You wanted to connect your past and present, but then when it actually happens, they bump up against each other, and you realize how subjective your perception is and how faulty your memory is. It's often not what people expect.

Brian Lehrer: People could sometimes get judgmental. I actually know somebody who went and looked at the house that they used to live in, and they said, "Oh, the new people put on a really ugly door."

Faith Hill: Yes. [chuckles] I talked to one researcher, Jerry Burger, and he's written about this, and he interviewed hundreds of people and he said like, one really consistent thing was that people hated changes to their house when they went back and visited. I found the same just writing this article as I've talked to people about it, everyone is bringing up, like if they've visited a childhood home and someone else lives there, it's something really-- it just almost feels like an invasion. Your memories feel very precious, and it's as if someone snuck in and moved things around without your consent.

Brian Lehrer: That same you see Santa Clara psychologist, Jerry Burger, interviewed hundreds of people I see from your article and found that about a 1/3 had traveled as adults to visit a childhood home, another 1/3 hope to. Did he discover what people were hoping to get from that visit?

Faith Hill: Yes. People had some different motivations, but a big one was that sort of experience of feeling disconnected from your past self. He talked to a lot of people who would look through old photo albums or something like that, and they would say like, "Who is that person in the photo?" That just doesn't seem like me. They would go back to try to make it more real to them. Our memory is so connected to place. When you enter a place, these memories can come flooding back. It does make sense.

Brian Lehrer: He also found to quote from Professor Burger one more time that he-- Sorry, I lost this note, but I remember that it had to do with how it can be healing for some people because not everybody has only warm memories of their childhood homes. For some people it can be healing, but for some people not.

Faith Hill: Right. He did find that. I think for a lot of people it was mixed partly because memories were good and bad, and partly just because of this weirdness of going back and it not being what you expected. Some people really did have very traumatic childhoods that he talked to, and they thought it would give them a sense of peace and wholeness to go back. For some people, it did the opposite. It was very upsetting because it is so just a visceral way to bring back memories. He said he doesn't suggest everyone visit.

Brian Lehrer: Maggie on Long Island, you're on WNYC. Hi, Maggie.

Maggie: Hi, there. I actually purchased my childhood home from my parents. It has been kind of a wild ride of a combination of making the house my own, but also working on dealing with all of my family heirlooms and things like that, that my mom downsized. We're now the keepers of the family home. My husband and I.

Brian Lehrer: Are there ghosts that you hope to try to chase or ones to avoid because so many memories can come back?

Maggie: Yes. I think that thankfully a lot of things have been happy memories here and so I think that I am really trying to preserve a lot of what was great about growing up at this house while also trying to honor that this is a family home, and there's been some not so great things that have happened here too. I think that it's like a constant trying to reconcile those two things. For sure.

Brian Lehrer: Maggie, thank you very much. Faith, I know somebody who when their parents died, when the second parent died considered buying and moving into the parents' home, their childhood home, and decided that it would just be too sad because they'd be thinking about their parents so much, their late parents.

Faith Hill: Yes. I think that makes a lot of sense. I can relate to the ambivalence. I think there's just a real melancholy sometimes to visiting home. I think part of it is that even if there are good memories, you realize that the time has passed and you can't get that back, and the present moment is going to be gone too. There's a real sense of loss both for people and events that happened, and also just the fact that you can't stop time.

Brian Lehrer: Debra and Yonkers, you're on WNYC. Hi, Debra.

Debra: Hi, Brian. I went back to Michigan where I grew up in the '60s. I went back a few years ago and got together with some classmates who I hadn't seen in 50 years. Our house was-- My parents had the house built, it was built on Lake Michigan, and there's now a big gate at the entrance of the driveway. I figured I'll just see if they'll let me in, I'll explain that I grew up in this house. I went, drove up, pushed the button to the speaker outside the house and the gates just opened. I felt like-

Brian Lehrer: [chuckles]

Debra: -I was being entered into the Emerald City. I was so excited and I drove up this long, long driveway and the house didn't look anything like the house my parents built. They had changed so many things that I was looking for all these things to bring back the memories. It was so changed that none of that was there. I said to the owner who let me in, but I was very grateful that at least he let me in the driveway and he would let me into the house because they'd had a flood recently and I guess he was embarrassed about construction or whatever. That Emerald City moment will always stick with me, and I was thrilled just to be able to go into the driveway.

Brian Lehrer: That's a great story. Thank you, Debra. I think we have one more like that, a really positive visiting childhood home story. Kristen in Montclair, you're on WNYC. Hi, Kristen.

Kristen: Hi, Brian. Can you hear me?

Brian Lehrer: I can hear you. Where'd you grow up?

Kristen: Good. I grew up in Montclair and was raised in a family home with four other siblings. Our parents got divorced when I was a young kid and so there was this separation that occurred from our home. That was obviously sad and there was a lot that went along with that. Having been a kid who grew up in a neighborhood in a pretty amazing town during the feral '70s, kids just left in the morning and came back at night. I wondered whether-- I'd always wanted to go back to the house and after I moved back to Montclair, I certainly went by a lot, but never felt comfortable imposing upon the current owners to walk in and knock on the door asking to see it.

I am in real estate for the last 10-plus years and lo and behold, the house came on the market this past year and I had the opportunity to go in and I was excited. I've driven by. They've taken such great care of the house. It's traded hands a couple of times. I have to say I was so excited to see-- Houses in the '70s weren't as precious as they are today. I was so proud to see everything that they had done. I expected to everybody else think, oh, they did away with this or they did away with that. Well, they made it as amazing as I could have ever dreamed it to be. It was really [crosstalk].

Brian Lehrer: That's so great that that was a good example. I have to ask you, as a real estate agent, would it be a conflict of interest for you to show your childhood home? Because I see you're telling us you got the chance to see it again because you're in the business. Would you show it or would that be precluded?

Kristen: For sure I would show it. Over the years have shown my best friends on the block houses that have traded hands over the years and going to be listing one that's going to be coming on the market in the neighborhood. Again, there's so many fun memories growing up at that time in your home. Again, just wandering your neighborhood as a young, young kid. Our kids today are less independent, I believe because they didn't have that experience. House has now and we still share so many amazing childhood memories from that but it was fun. [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Kristen, thank you. Wonderful story. We're going to end on that, except Faith, if you can, in 30 seconds because that's all we have left. Any tips for people who want or are planning to visit their childhood home, how to make it as positive experience as it can be?

Faith Hill: I would just suggest trying to manage expectations. It's not necessarily going to be exactly what you thought it was going to be, and it might feel weird, but I think if we can lean into that feeling, it's really beautiful to realize time does move and you wouldn't actually want your past to be frozen. I loved that last note that it's a good thing if someone else is using the space and enjoying it, or it doesn't need to be exactly how you remember it to be that beautiful experience. [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: For sure. Faith Hill's new article in The Atlantic is called Your Childhood Home Might Never Stop Haunting You. Thanks for sharing it with us.

Faith Hill: Thanks.

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