Change has always been a weird, albeit welcome, thing for me.
This photo was taken on what used to be the sala (livingroom) of my grandparents’ house. This was used to be where the center of all the action of the house was. My cousins and I would run across the wide floor. We would trip and slip because they floor is waxed everyday and my mom would keep telling us to behave because we might break a bone or something.
For the past 3 years, though, I would come visit my grandparent and find what was once a very lively place this way - empty. After my grandfather’s death and my grandmother’s stroke, my dad and his siblings decided that it is best for my grandparent to live on the bottom floor of the house so she could easily move around or go in and out of the house without having to climb up and down the stairs.
There’s nothing wrong about the bottom floor of the house. My aunt had it renovated and now it’s really nice and livable. The second floor kind of became the “guest floor” of the house; it only gets used when relatives would come and visit.
I can’t help but feel a huge wave of nostalgia as I come up this floor and sit down to either read or just reminisce the days I’ve spent here. Even if I only see this house only a few times a year, this will always hold a very special place in my heart. This was the house where I spent days with my late grandfather; this was the place where I met my cousins as teenagers after years of not seeing them; this was the place where I forget the worries I had left in the city and enjoy the company of my relatives from the Urbiztondo clan. This place is one of the many homes I have away from home.
