Revisiting a Childhood Home

The Home section of the Times recently published an essay by Francine Prose about her visit to her childhood home. Although she had not lived there for more than 40 years, it still inhabits her dreams, just as my boyhood home inhabits mine. Since leaving that home, she had driven by it a few times, in order to show it to her husband, and she had imagined asking permission to go inside. Then an essay assignment gave her an excuse to do so.

She called the present owner, explained who she was, and asked if she might see the house. The owner – an elderly widow who lived there with one or two of her grown children - had bought it from the people who had acquired it from Ms. Prose’s parents and by now had lived there for two generations. The owner agreed to receive her, and Ms. Prose spent a pleasant few hours in the company of the widow and her children, although they were unwilling – perhaps because of the old lady’s age - to take Ms. Prose beyond the ground floor.

Her essay recalled a visit that my brother, sister, their spouses and children, and my daughter made to my boyhood home about 20 years ago. They were in town for a family function (which I was unable to attend) and, at my sister’s request, drove past the house, where, on impulse, they stopped. They walked up the front steps, rang the bell, and when the front door was opened by the owners, a married couple, my brother and sister identified themselves as having grown up in that house. The owners were kind enough to invite them – nine strangers! – to see the house.

During my father’s last years, the house had begun to deteriorate, so my siblings were pleased to see that it was now nicely rehabilitated. They found, however, some changes. The third floor's area was now about 50% larger than it had been during our childhood – it had been reduced by false walls – and the chain-link fence that had enclosed an area behind the garage had been removed. In that space, the first owner, a hunter, had kept his dogs.

Alas, my siblings couldn’t tell me whether our magnificently antlered moose’s head had remained. It had been mounted over the great stone fireplace in a high-ceilinged timbered room - an American version of a hunting lodge, complete with gunracks - that the hunter had added to the house. All during my childhood, I felt a strange sympathy for that moose and even now I’m curious as to his fate. And I wish I knew whether it was the hunter who killed that moose.

But I'm not the only one with a question. During my siblings’ visit the owners asked them to explain the lock on the outside of the master bedroom door. Why was it on the outside? Our parents had placed in that room the only television set, and they installed the lock in order to limit the amount of time we children spent watching it. No doubt this was a disappointing answer, for the incarceration of a mad aunt would have been far more interesting.

When I called my brother to tell him about Francine Prose’s article, he informed me that the first owners of our childhood home, the hunter and his wife, had called upon my parents and asked to see the house. I don’t know what my parents’ response was, but I hope it was as gracious as those who received Ms. Prose and my siblings. Once you’ve lived in home that you love, it continues, in some strange way, to be yours.