Most things around me were hand-made when I was growing up, including the gate to my backyard. The gate was painted white just like our wooden clapboard house, which my father had also built. He had made the latch of the gate by just attaching a short board so that it pivoted on a bolt. There was a wooden notch to catch the latch. Whether I was getting home from school or going out to play or going for long walks, opening or shutting the gate would be accompanied by the satisfying, “klunk” of the latch being opened or shut.
I have recently been thinking about those days, and I am puzzled about a missing memory. I cannot remember shutting that gate the last time, but I know there was a last time.
It would have been when I was going off to college. I was also very much in love and engaged, so ahead of me was all my married life and all of my career. Behind me was all of my childhood from as early as I could remember. My parents had just moved to another town to follow my father’s only change of work that I had ever known. I was alone in the house, gathering up my last few articles. Everything else had been moved out, and the familiar house was empty. Ghosts of the past were too young to even be rising. Instead there were only the soundless echoes of all the years of myself and my family growing together…echoes that were all jumbled together into the ringing hollowness of the too little rooms that were barren of more things than I could bring to mind.
I would have looked into each empty room and then gone outside, locking the door to the house behind me. I would have crossed the empty yard on my way to the gate. I would have been aware of the absence of my dog, who would once have been dancing around my feet, but that now was sleeping underground behind the garage. Then I would have turned around outside the gate and closed it for the last time.
I never went back into that yard, although I have often cruised slowly past the deteriorating house that I can barely recognize…a run-down house that is occupied by strangers who litter my yard and house with junk and debris. Lately I have reached the point of returning less and less. Maybe I have reached another pivot point, one where you say your belated goodbye’s and turn, and while turning, close the gate…
”klunck.”
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Comments: 6
The house isn't ruined; just changed dramatically. A big addition, chopping up of remaining rooms, a large concrete slab where there used to be grass. It was sad, but at the same time brought back lots of good memories. I have always had illusions of owning it again, but it could never be what it was before.
Strangely, I am considering moving into the other house I grew up in. My brother still owns it. I had a look a couple of weeks ago. It is little changed and also brought back many memories.
Diane, it sounds like this *was* timely. That would be neat if you were to move back into a house you grew up in. I think roots and history are important pieces of who we are, however we touch or connect with them.