This is the house of my childhood summers.
Awhile back I wrote about the house in a short, very short story (Click here to read it)
They say you can’t go home again. I say, pish tosh, you can but you won’t always find things have stayed the same as you remember. Unless… you do !!
Years ago when I was driving past I saw a young woman on the porch. Something made me stop the car and get out to speak with her. She was pleasant and seemed interested when I said that more than 50 years ago I had spent all my summers there with my family. We chatted for a bit and then she asked me if I’d like to come inside !
Would I ever. But, was I prepared to step back into my childhood … would I be disappointed or pleased ! Even though the rooms had somehow become smaller the house was a lot like I had remembered it.
I think I made the young woman feel at ease, and that I wasn’t some weirdo trying to check out the house when I mentioned the secret room to her.
Memories came rushing back like mini-tidal waves… it must have been the familiar smell of the house that evoked them. They say the sense of smell is the strongest memory inducer and I agree. The kitchen was pretty much the same, the original sink was still there. The screen door out to the yard still creaked… I wonder if they’re deliberately ‘built in’ to screen doors!
I felt my heart quicken as I started up the stairs to the second floor where the bedrooms all were. You know how sometimes you just know something great is going to happen. It did.
The same exact wrought iron beds were STILL in the same bedrooms. A-maz-ing, just really blew me away. Wow. As I headed down the hall to the room that had been mine I glanced into the bathroom… yup, clawfoot tub, slanted floor, low ceiling that my 6’2 father bumped his head on every single morning.
My room was at the back of the house just off the upstairs back porch. It was small, only room for a twin size bed, a small dresser and a chair but lots of room for dreaming and thinking about the future.
The stairs are where I learned to go up and down one foot after the other, not one foot at a time like a little kid.
On this porch my girl friend Jackie Robinson and I used to put on shows and play dress up. ( By the way, I didn’t know until I was much older that there was ANOTHER Jackie Robinson). On this porch was a glider where I spent many hours reading, watching hummingbirds and gliding back and forth. On this porch we played board games and drank lemonade. On this porch we watched the sky darken and the stars come out. On this porch and in this house…summer happened.
My friend Will Jones and I were always looking for things to keep us busy and out of trouble during our summers on MV. Someone showed me how to make little flowers by using yarn and forks… I immediately showed Will. We set about our tasks, me at my house, he at his.
Will had carried those forks from his house way on the other side of Oak Bluffs …
up Circuit Ave …
… to my house where we freed his mother’s forks of their yarn. I have no recollection of what we did with the yarn flowers.
