Author’s Note
I remember the first time my husband, Tim, took me to his hometown—20 minutes north of Portland. I would later learn that everything is always about 20 minutes away from everything else: the grocery store, the highway, the marina, the restaurants.
We drove through the sleepy side streets and he showed me it all: where he hid his money under the railing at the Food Stop so he wouldn’t have to carry it up each time, the back door of the high school gym where he had a key and could shoot baskets whenever he wanted, the trees that edged his yard where they would zip-line with a vacuum hose, and the house he called home.
Over the years, we visited often, and the stories of his childhood became stories I knew by heart. The friendships I built with his family became my own. And the beige, brownish-pink, or tan ranch he grew up in—its color impossible to pin down—once the place where Tim lived, became part of the story I was building with him.
Now, as his parents age and consider what comes next, I find myself lingering a little longer whenever we visit, staring into the ceiling of the yellow basement bedroom, breathing in the quilts, tracing my hands along the cookie jar on top of the fridge that belonged to his great-grandmother. I look around at the rooms that have shaped my husband, our children, and me, and I can’t help but wonder what these walls will hold in another decade or two.
The story is mostly the same each time it's told. The names of the neighborhood dogs are Poncho and Belvedere. They started at the top of the hill. The training wheels had just come off. Who pushed whom first is always in question.
The hill remains familiar, its sloping pavement now interrupted by the speed bumps that recently went in to accommodate the traffic headed from the golf course. The bike is long gone, not because of the crash into the bushes that day, but because it’s been more than 30 years, and generally, bikes aren’t built to last that long.
The house has been painted. Old photographs reveal its many iterations over the years. One summer, all the adult kids went back, bringing their spouses, some with kids of their own–climbing ladders and slurping down greasy pizza as payment. The gray paint was just a little too pink, but it stayed that way for more than a decade. Colorblind to the changes, the woodpeckers and goldfinches still find the feeder even after winter snow flurries drift all the way into early May in Maine.
The bedrooms have shifted ownership over the years. Each one a den of childhood transformation. Pencil scratches in the wooden window sills mark high school loves long gone. The back door stays mostly closed now; no one is sneaking out for the night. Some rooms are quieter than they used to be.
But the house stands, holding what it knows.
In twenty years, whose footsteps will tiptoe along the stairs?
Will the piano still gather the children in the living room while the adults pull the dining table leaf to make room for all of the people who have grown up and loved here?
Will the evergreen Advent wreath still sit in the center, with the Christmas casserole, fruit trays and cinnamon buns arranged around it?
Will someone impatiently wait for the snow to melt, then walk the youngest sibling to the top of the hill and give him his first lesson in bike riding?
And will the house still be there–quietly absorbing the sounds of another childhood, taking in another season, another story?
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