2002-10-28 - 11:07 p.m.
I woke up this morning thinking about all the places to which I can never go back, places that now live only in my dreams. I have always had a strong sense of place; the epochs of my life are firmly anchored to the surroundings in which they unfolded. I have always wondered what it would be like to come from a family or tradition where you were able to return for your whole life to the same places you visited or lived as a child. For a long time I had one such place: my grandmother's house in Dismal Seepage. It was the quintessential Grandmother's house, a stately two-story Victorian with an aura of secret history, sitting on a corner, surrounded by big trees. I spent a lot of time there as a child, and whenever I returned as an adult, my childhood emotions came flooding back. I always wanted to go upstairs to see the little round stained glass window and the bust of Beethoven, still scary even with a chip in his aristocratic nose. I remembered how intrigued I was with all the marvelous, glamorous grown-up stuff belonging to my two aunts, who lived up there. When I stayed there, as a mischievous four-year old, I would often sneak into their rooms and get into their nail polish and jewelry boxes. They resorted to trying to scare me away by telling me there were bears and big spiders upstairs. And when that didn't work, they once dipped a tomato stem into black ink to make a fake spider and set it on top of the jewelry box to convince me. I think they owned up to the trick after my screams brought everyone in the house running.
I still have dreams that I am upstairs in my grandmother's house, in the large high-ceilinged room that belonged to my Aunt Janice, the one I most worshipped. I still have dreams of finding closets full of beautiful clothes because I used to go into their closets and finger the satin and net of their formals and try on the high-heeled sandals, imagining the day when I, too, would be grown up and beautiful.
Even though in later years, I realized that the room was not so big, and the clothes not so glamorous, my impressions were set so long ago that they will never change. I wonder if you lived in the same house all your life, if the substance of your memories would change along with your own perception of reality?
Not too many years ago the grandmother who lived in this house gave me a small wooden box, and when I lifted the lid, there was my name, written in large awkward letters, first in white chalk and then in pencil. It was written there by me of course, when I was still young enough that writing my name on something was an irresistible challenge and a delight. Here was evidence that I was not always a neat printer (something I am famous for), that I was confident enough to lay claim to this little box that I must have liked but did not own. There is so little evidence left of childhood, of all the stages of life lived, and then discarded. We always think those things that are recently outgrown or replaced to be the most worthless. Only later do we realize that we would have liked to see that old relic again and revisit the life that went with it.
I used to be amazed at the house where my x-husband's family lived, built by an ancestor, and owned by several generations of the family. He could go into the attic and find all of his own material history preserved, from baby shoes to BB guns, first grade tablets to high school diplomas. I wonder what it would be like to come face to face with the things I remember? Would I have fewer illusions, repeat fewer stories to myself to keep the thread of my experience connected?
My family moved frequently when I was young, not over a broad geographic area, but just into different houses. And in truth, I've been just as itchy-footed as my parents were. I always loved to move. A new house was a fresh start, a chance to change something in your life, to be a new person until the problems you left behind caught up with you. But it also meant that you eventually rid yourself of everything that was not immediately needed. We used to have a saying that was kind of a joke in our family: "Three moves equals a fire." But it wasn't far off the mark. Boxes of old memories get heavier and heavier, less and less precious, the more you carry them from place to place. And one day you realize they are gone and you can't remember which move it was, which closet did not quite hold them.
I have tried to go back and see some of the houses in which I've lived, and an amazing number of them are gone. Even my old school has been torn down. Places I once called home exist only in my mind, now. I used to talk to houses, especially when we were moving. I would always find some last private moment to say good-bye and tell our house that it wasn't it's fault we were moving out, that we loved living there, and some more nice people would come along to take care of it soon. I wonder what happened to all those good-byes.
I was twelve years old when John F. Kennedy was shot. I remember being out of school for several days, and watching the funeral and all the news coverage on our little black and white television. And then because I was a kid and I was stir crazy cooped up inside with my little siblings, I went out to the woods by myself. I had very little political consciousness at that age, but I knew something big had happened and I was in some way a witness to it. And to commemorate that, I took my little pocket knife and carefully carved my full name and that date, November 22, 1963, in the smooth white trunk of a dead tree. And I have always wondered how long it was until that tree trunk no longer existed, or if anyone else ever saw it. I imagined myself coming back as an adult and remembering to look for the carving. I looked forward at myself looking back, and could see it all except the high price that time charges for a place in the future, and how much I would have to remember.
We moved from that farm when I was fifteen and I remember my conflicting emotions. I was glad to be moving into town, in many ways, but I remember understanding that I was leaving the place where I had done my most important growing up and I would never be the same.....not really. I would navigate the rest of my life without a hideout in the haymow, a tree house, the woods and fields and creek. These places are a part of my mental geography, places to which I will never return, places I keep coming back to.
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