It’s a beautiful old house but it has seen its better days. The basement is old and musky, the paint is discolored and the corners of rooms are brown with age and the occasional overflow of water when it rains too much outside. Because of this, most rooms are empty, storage now for crates of beer and old pots and pans. Several clothes lines hang for when drying outside isn’t possible because of the weather. Behind the heavy iron door sits the oldest of furniture, storaged in a room that once was a party room years ago. The wooden paneling still going strong, but laughter no longer fills its empty spaces. The roof leaks, the stairs squeak, and the house must be aired out daily to keep it dry, letting the fresh air in and the mildew smell out. The rooms most lived in now have been redone and most living is done where the fireplace stands cold. These rooms are cozy and show the least amount of aging. But they are aging.
He will die in this house. He has said it many times. There will be no moving, upgrading, downsizing. It is where he was born, where he grew up, where his memories live. The old ones he can’t let go of, from a time when everyone was alive; his parents, their parents, his sister.
The top story of the home isn’t used any longer. It’s the most welcoming part of the house and it suffers the most damage from age. Water leaks from the skylight in the kitchen, the tiles slowly crack and have come loose. The balcony sits empty and it is warm like a sauna compared to the constant airing of other parts of the house. It is in this area the past lives. Boxes filled with photos from a family who lived long ago, a family much smaller now, its members taken by time as their ghosts sit patiently in boxes left unvisited.
Kids have a way of opening doors to the past, not aware that they uncover pain and loss and love as they open drawers that gather dust, open boxes that sit in darkness in search of a new adventure.
It was a warm evening in summer, the rain fell lightly as the thunder rolled in the distance. Darkness comes late in the summer so as a family we decided to go through the pictures from the past, innocently opening wounds crusted over with time but not quite enough time to heal them. We all know that death is the only thing that can do that. So we sat outside in the warmth of the summer, in the dampness of the evening air and opened old envelopes from the past. The original blueprints from the house from the 1940’s, old letters from a war that scars to this day. Black and while square pictures of kids playing in fields that today have several businesses on them. This old life showed a house in its youngest years, with fresh paint, dark bricks, dirt roads and flower beds around the base.
The pictures from 65 years ago show a smiling little blond haired boy riding his bike on the dirt road with a smile ear to ear. They show happy parents that look much older than what they were, dressed in clothes too long for the summer days but appropriate for the time. The men always in dark clothes, the women always in white. Baptism parties, birthday parties and pictures from the first day of school. As we spent long moments peering into snapshots of the past and slowly the black and white photos turned to color, small squares turned to larger rectangles as the grey scale gave way to the soft, fuzzy colors of Kodachrome. The conservative fashion gave way to leisure suits of brown and dresses of bright purple and green with floral prints. Buckled high heels, paisley ties and 3 piece suits showed how fashionable they were. Party photos of smiling faces, cheeks red with an alcohol buzz and hands raised higher with drinks inviting a heartfelt Prost! And at some point the three piece suits gave way to the 80’s and oversized clothes and short hair for the women, the men with more manicured beards and moustaches. Their hair was shorter too.
But almost always in the background was the house, its changes also noticeable but its aging seems appropriate. Patios transformed to covered terraces, flower beds replaced with concrete walkways, an addition was built and the men smiled proud, sweaty smiles as they worked in the sun. The house was growing bigger but the family slowly wasn’t. His parents died eventually and their parents long before that. There were no new pictures of his sister past 12 when she died from a vaccine reaction when he was 15. But they eventually welcomed a son and his smiling face filled some of the space and his first school pictures were taking with the same house in the background like his father’s.
And then the pictures ended in the 80’s for the most part as the family gatherings got smaller and smaller. There was only one child to run around the property but he didn’t love it as much as they did, as much as his father did. He didn’t feel the connection to the past. And slowly the house grew quiet and the rooms were less lived in. The basement was storage instead of a meeting place for parties, the garden grew still.
And soon the father grew quiet and the hardships of family life took its toll. And when his son left for school it was now just the father and the mother in the old house and all the memories of happier days were placed in baskets and boxes and stored in the top floor of the house for safekeeping. But the memories haunted him or kept him company depending on how you looked at it and the father sat in the garden after moving the lawn for hours, and trimming the hedges and pruning the trees and he stared out over the grass in silence. He had become a man of not so many words and the past he carried sat silently with him.
And as he ages the paint continues to peel, the cracks in the walls and his life slowly grow bigger, the street gets louder with industrial traffic yet his property grows quieter. And he knows that it is only he who holds on to the past. He will die here because he was born here. All that he knows is still here and the only way he can stay connected to his past is to live in its shadow. His sadness is palpable and he knows it which is why he grows quieter still as he feels his life’s end approaching.
But not tonight. Tonight he sits with his wife and ex daughter in law and 9 year old grandson and he talks about the pictures from the past. He is happy to tell someone about the photos and would never have brought them out if his grandson had not found them. Those two hours of time travel were needed. To say hello again to old friends and to say good bye again to family. And even though the house is aging and life goes on, for two hours it felt as it time stood still. And now I see this place different too. I have taken pictures in the same garden, in the same rooms and on the same streets he took pictures on. And while the signs of aging on the house is sad it is also beautiful, so beautiful it hurts, not just his heart but mine too.
The Memory Cellar 