For most people the home they were born in and grew up in is usually a memory that exists in your mind or framed within old photographs. It's a rare bird that can say they were born in the house they can visit again in adulthood with all the component parts (and some of the furniture) intact. The house I go back to now in the suburbs of Montreal has changed dramatically in most ways but there are remnants perfectly preserved that if I look at in the right light and frame of mind instantly transport me back to childhood as if I were being beamed back in time on the Starship Enterprise. This lamp has lived in my house for the length of time I've been on earth, and for most of the time I look right past it as I reach up and twist the light switch unthinkingly. But here and there I see it again through the eyes of a child and it comes back to me in all its decorative '60's glory. And then I'm two. And it's afternoon. And I only have the haziest notion of what the adult world outside is about and what "work" means and what school is. And all the time in the world to wonder what kind of person I'll become.