Finding one's self on Google Earth

I've never really lived anywhere.

Ok, that's not entirely accurate. I have lived places, but my living there didn't really live a permanent, still discernible mark.

The house I spent my first few years of life is still there, but the apple tree and swingset are gone. The pink house I grew up in is still pink, but the tree swing was taken down, the bricked rose garden has long since died. The boy's first home no longer has hydrangeas out front, the wrought iron has been removed, and strange little gnomes now guard watch.

There is no evidence of our having called those places home, no hand prints, no marks on walls showing height achievements, no sign our family really ever existed there.

And then yesterday, a fluke. The man is on Google Earth looking up directions and decides to test the matrix. He pulls up our house in Ireland. You know, the carbon copy of every other house in the estate. Same colour, same shape, same door.

But there in the window, next to the front door, are my wellies. 
And to the side of the house lay the children's bikes.
The shade upstairs has been pulled up, showing the boy's toys lining the window sill.
Sitting out front are our potted plants, and in the window next to my wellies is our tiny hyacinth.

We lived there. It was real. It did happen. It was home. For two short years it was ours. And there, for all the world to see, is the evidence.

image courtesy Google Earth