The 53 Mohawk Drive that I knew is a place that doesn’t exist anymore. It’s a place that hasn’t been itself for quite some time now. Every couple of years I go by what it has become (though it isn’t often because an entire State stands between this place and where I currently live) and I remember it for how it used to be inside.
I can’t go inside anymore because it no longer belongs to my family, but for this, I must admit, I’m partially glad. If I were, for some odd reason, invited inside by the strangers who reside in it now, I know it would not be the same as it was. The kitchen would be stripped of its herbal wallpaper. The bathroom walls would be repainted to cover up my Grandmother’s stencils. The beams that my Grandfather put in place himself will still be there as I remembered them, I’m sure, but the couch that should be underneath them is now in my bedroom here in Maine, and that Massachusetts yard no longer flies the American flag so proudly as it once did (Grandpa would loyally raise it up every morning and take it down again every night).
It was in this house that I realized the warmth of kin, here that I was initiated into a Beatles family, and here where my nostalgic interest for relics of the past was born.
It doesn’t exist anymore — not like it once did. But there is a fondness for and an influence from this place that will be around in this world as long as I am.
It really wasn’t the same in its last days, and unfortunately it was then that these photos were taken, but if you look closely enough, you may be able to recognize me a little. This backdrop, and the characters and props in its foreground, are what have shaped me. I’m thankful and happy to have had it all at one time…even if it now exists only in our memories.
xx. Julia
love. <3