When we moved into our home 20 years ago we our family was Linda and I,
6 year old Deb, and baby Kate not quite yet born. We had to add rooms
for the kids upstairs, the living and dining rooms were quite uninhabitable,
and we didn't have a lot of money. So, our bedroom, which had incredibly
ugly wallpaper, had to get by with a coat of white paint and a promise that
we'd fix it up someday.
Somehow someday never came. There was the kid's rooms to do, then the living
room, and when our bank accounts recovered from that, the outside needed
some attention, and then we needed new shingles, and then the potholes in
the driveway just got too out of hand, and a hundred other things and the
bedroom took back burner always.
Well, those blank white walls are an attraction for anyone with a pencil
or a crayon :-) We probably started it by jotting phone numbers,
but our kids got into it whole-heartedly and really put the history
of their lives on our bedroom walls. There is the childish crayoned scrawl
"Grammy 3847" at 6 year old height to the left of the back window. A "Kate
was here; 86 was the year" is at 12 year old height above our bed. There
are comments about mean teachers and "cool" boys, protests about the
unfairness of the world, a complaint about certain parents making too
much noise on weekend mornings, pen outlines of tiny hands, cartoon drawings
(my favorite is a full color work entitled 'The Psychotic Monk'; I leave
it to your imagination), dozens and dozens of telephone numbers, lists of
friends and treacherous enemies (ever-changing, of course), little poems
and limericks, and a sweet little "I love Mom and Dad" with a "Me Too"
postscript from the younger sister.
The older one called from Virginia last night; she wants to buy a house and
had a dozen questions about mortgages, and taxes, and fixed rates and
earnest money and all the other things we can hardly remember. We are happy
and apprehensive at the same time; buying a house is a big thing for
a single gal. We think maybe she should wait till she's married, which
is tentative for next year (he needs to finish grad school), but she thinks
this place is a steal, and doesn't want to miss the opportunity. So we
talk about that, and good neighborhoods (this one doesn't sound so great),
and she thinks she'll think about it some more.
After she hung up, Kate called from college to tell us about her grades, and a
new boyfriend. We talked for two hours, my wife and I passing the phone
back and forth, laughing and calling out "What did she say? What?".
She told us about her band practice and how they might get to play at
Brown, which would be "way cool" because an old boyfriend goes there and
she'd just love to see him in the audience, and all about the new boyfriend
and how he tried to write to her in Spanish (her major) by buying a
Spanish/English dictionary, and a hundred other details about her life,
and the tutoring she does, and her friends, and stop sending applesauce, Mom,
and then she had to go because it was somebody's birthday.
After we hung up we shut out the lights but I lay awake a few minutes
staring through the darkness and seeing, in my mind at least, the words
on the walls all around me. I took my wife's hand and squeezed it, but she
was already asleep, and then there was this terrible lump in my throat and
tears were burning my cheeks. I can't say whether I was crying because
I was sad or because I was happy, but it didn't matter. Because it
felt good; incredibly, incredibly good.
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