Life With Objects

At what moment does a house become a home? I’ve turned this question over in mind countless times in the six weeks since my parents sold my childhood home. As retirees do, they purchased a new house, two time zones away, and it is lovely, filled with gorgeous logs and toasty floors warmed by radiant heat and decks offering stunning views.

But. It is not yet home.

Not long before my childhood home sold, I went to say goodbye. Stepping gingerly out of the car, the smells of the pasture and my mom’s peonies and the decaying pecans under the old tree overwhelmed me. I longed to bottle the singular scent for nostalgic evenings in black Novembers. Opening the front door for the last time, I toured the house as a potential buyer might, drifting from room to room, peering into each closet (oh, the Easter decorations closet! I wonder what became of our Easter baskets?), gazing out of the windows (remember when Brother believed so earnestly he saw Rudolph fly over the pasture, and we huddled together, watching that red light trail across the December 24 sky?), and trailing my fingers over the banisters (all those practice walks down the front stairs in my mother’s wedding dress, clutching my Glenda wand as a bouquet).

I sat briefly at the kitchen counter and mentally sorted through all the meals my mom cooked for us on the old Jenn-Air. Venturing to the porches, I recalled kiddie pools and pumpkin carving sessions and steaks that dogs stole off the grill. In the yard, I saw that old swing set, long since taken down, where I fell from the rings and first experienced all the breath in my body being knocked from my lungs. Looking out towards the creek, I remembered hours spent digging in the mud with my brothers, cognizant of snakes and snapping turtles, but without fear. Under the blue spruce, I felt the sting of losing a dog that I loved dearly, sitting for hours into the darkness, calling for him to come back. At the stable, I thought I could still smell my first horse’s breath, sticky with alfalfa hay. In the cool garage, I felt the heat of the hot muffler on my inner wrist, as I hurriedly changed the oil in my first car under my dad’s watchful eye, ignoring his gentle instruction to wait until the car had cooled off. I still have the scar.

My brief farewell to the only home I’ve ever known was spent behind sunglasses, licking away tears. Not the tears that drown your heart and your ability to feel, but sweet tears that water the memories of a childhood that was a gift, and an adulthood able to recognize that.

I will not, as Thomas Wolfe wrote, go home again. But I am looking forward to that undefinable moment when this new house becomes home.

Trapped on their trampoline. Just kids like us. Close to the same ages: between eight and 12. Two of the Tucker children bounced on their trampoline in the center of our yard. My brother and I, along with about 10 neighborhood kids, told them they couldn’t get down because we owned the yard.

“We own the trampoline, you fuckers,” the young Tucker girl yelled back.

“You have to stay on it then,” my brave friend, Ben, yelled back at her. I stood quietly, never good at cruelty, even though I believed, based on what I had overheard from my parents, that their parents screwed us out of our dream house on the hill, the ritzy hill, the east bench. We moved to a condo a year before - abandoned my childhood home with hopes to build the new one. The Tuckers moved in - a rent to own kind of deal, but stopped paying the mortgage after the first month.

My mom and dad sat inside my childhood home, just behind our backs. The house of all my Christmases and birthdays. The house, even as an adult, I remember as the only home of my youth. They sat with the Tucker parents. It took nine months to evict them. My parents went through the formalities while we heard language my mom would have ripped our tongues out for using. “Fuckers and motherfuckers and cocksuckers.”

“Your parents are kicking us out cause we have no money. They‘re motherfuckers,” the Tucker kids yelled down to us between bounces.

“That’s not true,” Ben yelled back, even though his eight-year-old mind had no understanding of rent-to-own scenarios.

“Shut up, fucker,” the girl yelled.

At that moment, my parents came out of the house and called for my brother and me to get in the car. We drove away. For the next week, I asked my dad if we kicked them out because they had no money. He said no. But I worried. What if it were true? Could we, as a family, be heartless.

The next week, we moved back home. The walls were redone. Wood paneling lined the entire home. New sinks were put in the bathroom, along with new tile and mirrors. The house didn’t look like ours. It had completely changed.

“Where did they get the money to pay for all this?” I asked my dad.

“They took it from us, from the money I saved for the new house,” he said. My dad’s eyes showed me his disappointment for just a moment, but then covered it up with a fake smile. “But we’re home, now.”

I traced the ugly, wood paneling around the family room with my fingers and said, “They should replace the ‘T’ in Tuckers with an ‘F’.” I thought I was alone. I was not.

“Kasey,” my mom said from behind me. I expected soap, a scrub, and an extended grounding . “They should,” she said. She walked into a kitchen that only slightly resembled hers.