There’s Comfort in a Past Life That Lives Across the Street

Looking out my kitchen window, I can see my house--my old house--across the street.

The house we lived in for 13 years, where my children were born, where my husband died. The home my daughters and I left last summer to move across the street, to a bigger house, with more possibilities.

I haven’t missed our old place much. We’d outgrown it, felt hemmed in by its clutter, squeezed as often as comforted by the weight of accumulated memories.

But it looks beautiful on this evening, and it is more than the azaleas in bloom or the majesty of the budding sycamore tree.

It is the passel of children in the frontyard, laughing and running up its hill, climbing the rocks along the driveway, under the watchful eye of parents, ever ready to settle a sudden spat or retrieve a ball that rolls into the street.

I watch and am struck by a longing to be them, to slip back into the life that I once lived. And I realize it is not the old house I am missing, but the old times when our family’s life seemed so much simpler.

That we have moved not just to a new home, but to a new stage in our lives; have left not just a house behind, but an identity, a way of life.

And letting go of that past is harder than I ever dreamed it would be.

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It is like watching a movie of a life now gone, a real-life retrospective of what we used to be.

The new family has two little children, a mom and dad, a dog. I know their routine as well as I know ours . . . because their routine is what ours used to be.

The evenings spent in the frontyard, playing until the last bit of light fades away. Dad holding an unsteady skater, Mom pulling a wagon up the street. Neighbors stop by and they laugh and chat, holding a dog on a leash or a new baby. Somebody is blowing soap bubbles, a ball bounces into the street.

“That was you guys,” I tell my daughters, uncertain if they remember all those games of freeze tag and red light-green light and “Mother, may I . . .” When it was hot, we’d turn on the lawn sprinklers. On cool days, we’d set up a net for neighborhood volleyball games. On weekends, we’d picnic under the tree.

Our neighbors then were young families . . . like ours, like these. The past, it seems, is repeating itself, as aging families move on, and bikes give way to Big Wheels again, Raffi music replaces rap and ‘N Sync.

I suppose I should feel not like I’m missing out, but like I have a front-row seat to a past that might otherwise disappear in our fading memories.

We are lucky, I try to tell my children. Watching our neighbors gives us a tangible way to connect with our past, a way to remember who we once were, to drift back to pleasant memories.

Because there, on the lawn of our old home, is a family living our old memories.

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My children miss the old days too. I feel it in their restlessness, as they scout around for something to do.

They don’t need me to ride herd on their playtime. They can ride their bikes, swim, shoot basketball hoops, without me.

But on this day, they have a request, a throwback to their “old house” days: “Remember how we used to play badminton in the frontyard? Can we set it up again?”

So I dig out our old net, poles and rackets, and try to find a way to improvise. For while our new house has its pleasures, its frontyard is not for playing. It is tiny, oddly shaped, ringed with flowers and trees. We fold the net to make it half its size, and anchor it in the flower beds.

And I watch them play from my kitchen window. It is almost comical, they seem so large and cumbersome, crowded into that tiny space between trees.

Every hit sends the birdie soaring, into a neighbor’s yard or through the branches of a tree. They seem to spend half their time running next door to retrieve it or throwing their racket up through the branches, to knock it free.

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Then the birdie lands on the roof, too far up for a child to reach. I head outside to help, but stop on the steps and watch the maneuvers of their rescue effort.

The oldest hoists her middle sister up, until her arms can reach the eaves. The youngest guides her motions--”more to the left, now swing”--and she swishes her racket across the roof, sweeping the birdie onto the ground near their feet. And the game resumes.

And I realize they no longer need that huge frontyard, or Mommy watching.

They are older now, more independent . . . not deterred by mis-hits or obstructions. The game goes on, because they are tall enough and they can reach.

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Sandy Banks’ column is published on Sundays and Tuesdays. Her e-mail address is sandy.banks@latimes.com.