Gone back home
The places we love
Of all the letters that passed between my parents and me, and there were many—most of which I still have—a few stood out as truly memorable. There was one my father wrote right after I left for college, full of wit, wisdom, and words to express how proud he was, both of me and for me. There was one my mother wrote, filled with implications and urgings about how I might (or might not) be behaving myself in an ongoing relationship.
And there was one I wrote as they prepared to downsize from the home they’d occupied for 29 years to a smaller, more manageable townhome. It had been my mother’s dream house, built with a bittersweet inheritance after she lost both her parents just 20 days apart and before they reached their mid-70s.
That letter is reprinted in full below, with just a few recent edits for length and clarity.
I tallied up the number of places I’ve called home. Not counting the intentionally temporary locations while I was off at school, I came up with 11. I know for some it’s many more, and for a limited few, it’s just one or two.
It strikes me that home might not be a place at all. It’s always where you’re coming from or what you’re going toward. It’s where pieces of your heart get rooted, sprout up, reach for the light, bloom. It’s where your love-centers live, so that even when you leave, part of you is still there. At times, it seems possible that everyone you’ve ever missed has just gone back home for a little while.
1 April 2004
Dear Mom and Dad,
As I sit to compose what will be a last letter addressed to 902 West Parkway, I recognize this to be of great significance. What words befit this house which looks, as Jim describes, like it grew there? This place, where our family experienced its largest set of accumulated memories, has been a haven for love and learning. Each room has its own story.
There was the basement, for little tots who wanted to scoot trucks or trikes across the floor, and for storing every article which had landed between opportunities of usefulness.
There was the playroom where grandchildren plugged themselves into the television, the exercise bike whirred, champagne and humor flowed on New Year’s Eve, and high schoolers gathered to be whatever they needed to be, in a place of which parents could approve.
The downstairs kitchen absorbed overflows of food, popcorn-fests, and the occasional Thanksgiving turkey in the oven. It was the also the place where beloved Maggie gave birth to wild-man Jackson in the winter before my marriage.
Rob’s room wasn’t really his, for when the house was built, in 1975, he was in his twenties and well begun on a life of his own. But it was the room with the most impressive wallpaper, and a room where furniture market people stayed, and a room that squeaked when you stepped on the floor near the dishwasher in the kitchen up above. It has a lifetime yet to live and maybe a bit of a chip on its shoulder.
Don’s room was the best sleeping room on the planet. With the curtains drawn, it was dark even in the daytime. Open windows sometimes became makeshift shelves for stereo speakers that forced loud funk music into the surrounding woods, prompting dad to storm in shouting, “Turn that crap down!” Sometimes, it was a scary room, there in the bowels of the lower level, but still the perfect place for a teenage boy who relished the relative freedom. It is a relief to know that the antique bed, where dad surely nurtured many of his own young dreams, will live on with purpose for your youngest grandchild.
The main level was thoughtfully designed, the flow of energy strong and continual from one end to the other. The guest room (aptly named, given that African violets were often found in the bath) must have known it would one day become the alternate room for the matriarch. It always did have an air of elegant practicality. The sun spent long hours there, welcoming visitors and family into its warmth.
The master bedroom was spacious enough for two to come and go without bumping—unless bumping was the act of choice—but this room was not pretentious. All the necessities of comfort were there: a king-size bed; a bathroom well-suited to modesty; a closet with shelf space for 30-year-old shoes; controls for every outdoor light, coveted but rarely used; television and telephone; the ever-changing mural of woods visible through the broad expanse of windows.
The living room was the place of polite gatherings, holiday celebrations, and wayward children who were threatened with their lives lest they rumble through and break something precious. Tiny antique chairs not intended for robust bodies were occasional sources of contention. Jim often found the yellow carpeting a delicious place to steal a nap. Perhaps the most raucous behavior tolerated in this room, notwithstanding the fallen Christmas tree, was the tradition of tossing coins onto the exposed beam near the fireplace. I wonder, will a historian or wayward child be first to rediscover those someday?
The dining room was in cahoots with the living room. If you sat in one, you ate in the other, the array of dishes almost as varied as the meals served. Typically, there was a centerpiece which, though beautiful, managed to obstruct someone’s view of someone else. After mealtime, we’d scoot back in those uncomfortably formal chairs, hoping no one would notice the cranberry sauce on the lace tablecloth, and reminisce.
The den sucked the life out of the living room time and again. Large men crowded into and around small couches trying to catch a glimpse of some televised sporting event. The built-in bar was a good excuse to migrate from wherever else they’d been. Maybe they felt steadier on those hardwood floors. It was an earthy space. Up the pecky cypress walls stood books and more books, while hanging nearby, like press box commentators, were the trophies from any number of hunting trips. Those walls knew our secrets. This was the family place, and as the family grew it became overly full. But no one ever seemed to want to leave.
The kitchen held court. The maple island was a roundabout which allowed for exits in all directions, as long as you knew where you wanted to go. If not, you just kept circling, finding answers, or sustenance, or laughter along the way. The mountains of meals prepared therein would surely rival the magnitude of Kilimanjaro itself, for this was the kitchen of one who cooked from the heart.
Apart from dirty clothes and years-old sewing projects, the laundry room went to the dogs. Buffy and Coco spent every night there, Maggie and Mollie only those too bitter to stay outside. It was there that Buffy would finally defy resurrection.
My room—the only one upstairs—stood alone. Thirteen steps up to enter my Taj Mahal, sentinel hamsters at the ready. The peaked roof of this space was first to capture the sound of a gentle rain, the sudden pop of falling hickory nuts, the scramble of squirrels playing tag. Two skylights were portals to the night stars and to trees swaying in the wind. On the desk, a green Trimline phone with its own number. On the shelves, the gradual evolution of bric-a-brac on display, from dolls and trip souvenirs to college memorabilia and wedding presents.
The adjacent bathroom, where the shower was eventually shorter than I was tall, saw all of my transformations, from prepubescence to motherhood. I spent an entire afternoon preparing for my high school prom in there.
From my perch upstairs, I could hear the start of a new day—curtains opening in the bedroom below, the sound of running water. I expected the chiming of the antique clocks day and night, and when I kept very still, I could hear those same clocks ticking methodically, a metronome for our lives.
We have been blessed to live in a place of so much strength and beauty. The land accepted the house and appreciated the attention given to partnering the two. Out back, the creek, where grandchildren played for untold hours, continues trickling on its way to anywhere. Along the bank, daffodils bloom each spring. The stately hickory grows on, right through the deck which was built to accommodate it. Critters dance and seasons fall on cedar shingles. This family moves on, each member leaving with a hope chest of memories, each leaving some of themselves behind. The house sighs, bids good morrow and opens its doors to a new chapter. We will never forget her. She will never forget us.
~Elizabeth
That WALLPAPER!! oh, glorious HP in the 70s, long live our grooviness!
May the current owners love this house as your family did, and fill it with their own memories.