I Didn’t Live in this House

But I grew up there

Empty now, but filled with light—the house looks beautiful as I walk through it via photographs. I’m grateful to see it again, albeit with a little remove. I feel every room in my aching heart.

I see where the grand piano used to be, and the single black phone on a hutch in the front hallway. Over there stood a cabinet filled with old bottles—don’t touch! In my mind’s eye the little glass decorations are still hanging in the kitchen windows. I know where the Christmas tree was set up every year.

My family and the family who lived here were inseparable. They had four children; Phil, Mary, Bill, Bob. In age they matched up with the four of us; John, Rob, Laura, me.

I keep looking at the wallpaper. Throughout the house, the exact same wallpaper from the 1970s (if not before) remains; a time capsule undisturbed for decades.

Does it still hold my handprint? Or the echo of my footsteps? If I peeled a stretch of it, what would I sense, emerging from underneath? The smell of popcorn, woodsmoke, fresh cut grass, and apple pie? Maybe someone playing Beatles songs on the piano, or people stomping snow off their boots at the back door, or the wheeze of someone laughing so hard they can’t catch their breath?

I remember laughing here so much, never crying. Some tears were shed—Bill wailing when he fell out of a tree and broke his arm. I looked out of an upstairs window and saw Bill slung over his father’s shoulder as they headed straight for the car.

Or when one of my brothers ran into the odd corner in the upstairs hallway and cracked his head open. Lots of tears, and blood, but he survived. Back then we had a doctor in town, Dr. P, and she might’ve just stitched him up at her house, where her office was. I’m not sure I was born when that happened, but I’ve heard the story so many times, it’s become part of my memory of the house.

Sometimes, because Bob and I were the youngest, it’d just be the two of us while our mothers had tea. We’d be constructing things in the playroom, a first-floor sunroom with big windows on all sides, and at least one bureau filled up with Lincoln Logs, blocks, Legos, and odd remnants of other toy sets.

I remember being small and my Mom giving me the “45-minute warning.” Every time, I asked her, “Is that more or less than an hour?” I hated to leave playing with Bob, at his house, so I needed to know exactly how many minutes I had left to enjoy.

The property is for sale now. My husband asks me why I won’t go to the open house. I say because I’ll be sobbing, and the real estate agent will think I’m on drugs or something. I wasn’t this sad when my parents’ sold the house I grew up in, in part because the house you share with your own parents is inevitably shaded by the natural conflict and friction of being their child. In a peaceful way, I was also finished with it, and settled in my own home.

This house was a vessel that held all the fun, all the communion and adventure and possibility, without loss or disappointment. And now, in this time when I feel my world contract with the death of my Dad, I mourn those innocent years, when the sun shone more brightly and there were no clouds in the sky.

Soon, all the touchable reminders of that time will be gone. Chances are, the buyers won’t know this home, and they won’t know us. The house will simply be a commodity to them, a numbers game; mortgage rates, repair estimates, taxes, return on investment.

They may steam off the wallpaper, take down walls, or even tear down the entire structure. But beware, our ghosts will remain, skipping down hallways, knocking down blocks, picking out a melody on the piano, and laughing, mostly laughing.