Going back to my hometown is a zipless path back to my past:
Seeing friends who go back as far as first grade Catching up with couples my husband and I sat in the stands with while watching our kids play soccer in the fall, basketball in the winter and baseball in the spring. (We thought it would all go on forever.)
Now when we visit those couples, we sit in comfortable family rooms sharing photos of grandchildren, talking about updates we have made to our homes so we can stay in them longer (called handicap accessible) and notice that though we are readily recognizable to each other, our hair is grayer, our walk not as robust and our short-term memories shot.
It’s not all about visiting the people. My time is also spent driving past the houses I have lived in or have been a significant part of my life. I drive past them often when I’m in town because each home marks a different chapter in my life. And when I feel surrounded by ghosts, it’s more comforting for me to visit the homes they inhabited than the cemeteries where they now lay buried.
I drive past at different times of the day, slowing down to take a picture from my car window or trying unsuccessfully to see beyond the windows into the physical interiors.
I notice casement windows have been replaced with double hung. A front door is now mahogany, not fire engine red. The top of the towering oak tree still dangerously overhangs the garage in the back yard. I notice the landscaping, the condition of the lawn and driveway, the number of cars in the driveway and the sheer size of the homes themselves – always much smaller than remembered.
And I wonder about the people. Who lives in my old room in Bond Hill? If it’s a little girl, is she worried about the boy who lives across the street peering in her oversized window facing his house – like I was?
Are there still beer cans hidden in the bushes of our former home in a suburb of Cincinnati? Do kids sneak onto the family room roof to smoke, as mine did? Did the new owners expand the finished basement – update the kitchen replacing the chipped Formica with granite and the knotty pine kitchen cabinets with more upscale scale cabinetry?
And in my parent’s former home, did the new owners finally break down the wall between the kitchen and dining room as we had begged my parents to do for years to make it more expansive? Is the chain link fence still there – the one that housed our family dog? Is that ugly white tile still on the guest bathroom floor?
I tried to find out. Respecting COVID concerns and recognizing how suspicious people are nowadays, I was hesitant to knock on the occupants’ doors of the houses that had meant so much to me and request a tour. So, one evening, I got the bright idea to send each of the occupants of the three homes a postcard. (After all, I knew their addressees.) I simply stated I was in town, had lived in their house or my parents had lived in their house and I’d love to come by and see it.
I mailed the stamped postcards over two weeks ago. I listed my cell phone and e mail address. I eagerly awaited a response. None came. My efforts to connect came to naught
Maybe it’s better that way – My memories of those special houses won’t be sullied by seeing improvements, updates and rehabs. I won’t see other family’s photos adorning the walls. Strange furniture flanking the fireplaces. Unfamiliar cars in the garages.
Maybe it’s better that way – In my mind’s eye, my mom is still serving us dinner in the wood paneled breakfast room in Bond Hill. My kids’ soccer cleats still block the first step of the staircase leading to the second floor bedrooms. My kids and husband and I are still enjoying Sunday night dinners with my mom and dad in the ranch house they moved into after I graduated from high school, watching our kids shamelessly begging for free samples of the steaks my dad was gleefully grilling for us all.
Maybe memories and past images are better left undisturbed and not updated.
