These Four Walls

The most common narrative in literature is the hero returning home.  

But not all homes are equal.  We get more from that first house than anywhere else.  The memory of that first bedroom, the curve of the living room couch, the light behind a certain fixture.

 

Singer/songwriter/hero Bruce Springsteen said all his songs come out of that place.  "My deepest motivation comes out of the house that I grew up in and the circumstance that were set up there."  He said it's a place "you carry with you forever, no matter where you go or what you become." 

In a new book Michelle Obama said "Everything that I think about and do, is shaped around the life that I lived in that little apartment.” 

So what will our children remember?

The impact of these four walls scrapes at me as they run off, realizing the walls that we built are those that will define them.  Our house, the place we designed with the photos we picked, the drapes she chose, the books we stacked, are the ones of their childhood memories.  

Springsteen and Mrs. Obama describe the memory fragments: the smell of the kitchen, the light at the end of a father's cigarette, the sound of a sibling on the other side of a thin wall.

Parenting expert Wendy Mogel tries to assure parents not to mistake "a snapshot taken today with the epic movie of your child's life."  But how do we know what will stick and what will fade?  Will they remember the time I got up and made breakfast or the time I slept in?  Will they recall the time I yelled when I was right or the time I was just having a bad day?

A few weeks ago on Spring Break in a darkened and hip restaurant in South Beach my middle child started to cry without provocation.  It was just the three of us, me, the college-bound eldest and the middle.

She explained the burst of emotion came from the knowledge that with travel, summer, camp and jobs, it was coming to an end.

"This is the last week we'll be in the house together," she said.  "As brother and sister."

And then the day came, their last breakfast around that kitchen island, the scene of so many morning comments, passed forks in silence, shared muffins, stolen last pieces of French toast.  The only fireworks were in my heart as he gnawed at a bagel and she measured out gluten-free granola into her yogurt. On their first day of school there were pictures and new backpacks, sharpened pencils and juice boxes.  Today there was no fanfare, just two adults looking for their car keys, going in separate directions to different schools. 

It will never be like this again I thought, and she articulated.  So much of what has occupied our minds in that home over the past 18 years has been about what they are seeing. No longer are they learning this lesson or that, those days are past, either they saw it or they didn't.  They remembered it or not.  There is still much to learn, but it's too late to change the arc.

Last week the middle child needed to go to the National Archives for a school project.  We drove through rush hour to get in line with the Spring Breakers and when they all ran to see the Declaration of Independence, we viewed some obscure document, took notes and finished.

With time still left in our morning I grabbed her hand as we ran across Constitution Avenue to the National Gallery of Art.  Somewhere below the gallery, between the section that houses the old masters and the moderns is a gift shop, a waterfall and a little cafe.

I hadn't been there in years and so a few wrong turns around a series of 15th century European sculptures until we emerged at the gleaming underground.  There wasn't much food yet and so she got water and I got coffee and we sat for just a moment.  There were mostly old people eating sandwiches out of brown bags, others who worked at the gift shop setting up their stalls.  And next to us a man and women dressed for work drinking coffee and eating Tootsie Pops?

We listened to the conversation, the clack of shoes on the floor, the workers making lunch for the tourists.  And I told her that she won't remember this day, but I hope she will one day know the complete pleasure of having 15 minutes with your daughter and sharing an espresso.

"I always remember this stuff," she assured me. "I have a good memory for this kind of thing."