So says Geraldine Page, in her Oscar-winning performance in one of the most beautiful films ever made about the passage of time: The Trip to Bountiful. The film is based on a stage play by Horton Foote, who wrote the screenplay for To Kill a Mockingbird and Tender Mercies.
It is a story about an old woman who wishes for one last trip to her childhood home, in Bountiful, Texas. In the film, she deals with her son's shrew of a wife who discounts her every feeling. In my life, I "deal" with Vicky, who validates and celebrates them. Geraldine Page has to sneak off to make her trip to Bountiful--I have Vicky who is excited for me and who wants to see the places that hold these long-ago memories of my childhood. Fortunately, her son understands, because this type of trip is better with someone who understands.
But someone who understands exactly what? It seems like it is obvious, but thinking more about it maybe it is not. Maybe all there is to understand is just that there is something there that needs to be understood.
Like for Geraldine Page, there is, I think, something that draws us back to our childhood homes. One would think this might more likely be the case if the memories of them are happy ones. But of course it is more complicated than that, because psychological research suggests that happy people are those who reconfigure their pasts in happier ways. So what do happy “memories” actually mean? Geraldine Page’s past was not all that happy in an objective sense. She had lost children, and had an unhappy marriage because her father disapproved of the man she loved and so ruined that opportunity for her. But she is happy nonetheless, endlessly singing hymns in the home she shares with her son and daughter-in-law, much to the annoyance (probably partly purposeful) of her daughter-in-law.
So what is the draw for me to visit my childhood home, knowing ahead of time that it will be in terrible shape, with little if anything about it reflecting the pride my family had in it when we lived there? I had seen it many years ago, and already it was looking bad. It is far too small to be a home people would want these days--only one bathroom, small kitchen, two bedrooms, no garage, etc. I knew it had been turned into a student rental long ago, and we all know how those end up.
But regardless, it is still mine and I couldn’t wait to see it and to show it to Vicky.
When she finally arrived in Bountiful, Geraldine Page found that her old home was deserted and trashed. She sat on the front porch, talking first with the Sheriff who drove her there, and then with her kind son who “got it” about her, and in her mind it was as beautiful as it always had been.
That’s how I felt yesterday. My precious childhood home was trashed and empty. It looks too bad to even rent out to a couple of college students who are just looking for a roof. School is in session, and OSU is only a few blocks away, yet it stands there with no life in it.
A little different than it looked in 1955 with my family in front and my Uncle Wayne.
A little different than it looked in 1955 with my family in front and my Uncle Wayne.
It needs everything: painting, the siding is falling off in several places, it is overgrown, and inside it is ugly. There was junk lying around everywhere. Nothing looks as if anybody has cared about it since we moved from there 54 years ago.
But that’s not what I felt. Instead, I could stand outside it and see myself, as a 9-year-old, playing badminton in the front yard almost every evening in the summer, with the “birdies” frequently landing on the roof (I wonder if some are still stuck in the gutters).
In the back yard, at least once a week, frequently with our bestest-ever friends the Sharrocks, we would make home made ice cream. Jimmy and I would turn the crank, and then eat from the paddle—the best part. I don’t remember eating a meal and then having ice cream for desert—instead I think the ice cream was the meal, which is why we could just keep eating as many bowls as we wanted. I don’t ever remember being told “that’s enough.” I swear I tasted that ice cream yesterday just thinking about it.
To get to that back yard we went through a gate in a white picket fence. The gate had a trellis over it, with some type of plant growing on it. It was lovely.
I saw myself as a 9-year-old boy mowing the grass with a push mower in the hot Oklahoma sun. The yard seemed larger to a little boy with a push lawn mower than it did to me now.
The driveway now has a big glob of concrete on it—someone did something with concrete and just left a huge glob there several years ago. Jeesh. After we left, the garage was made into a room of some sort, although peering into the window it was clear that it was done sloppily—there was no access to the room from the main part of the house. Instead, you had to go through the kitchen, then through the utility room, and then into the back of it. In other words, basically all that was done was that the garage door was nailed shut.
And they took down the basketball backboard my father had constructed for me over the garage, although even if it was there one would have a heck of a time playing a game because of the big glob of concrete in the middle of the driveway. Plus, you’d put out the windows when you shot an air ball (not that I ever did that).
The yard was overgrown. There was a huge tree in the front yard that wasn’t even a small tree when we lived there. People plant trees without giving much thought as to what will happen when the trees get big. The houses on that block are now mostly overgrown for the same reason—they are small houses and need small bushes, not huge trees. In a strange kind of way, planting trees can damage the feel of a neighborhood.
Because it was empty we took the liberty of looking in the windows. In the living room I could see the doorway (off to the right) that led upstairs to the bedroom my father constructed for me. The room was originally a landing above the garage, but he knocked a hole in the wall, built a stairway, and enclosed the area. He did it all in plywood, even the ceiling, and it looked great!
I loved it because I could hang my model airplanes from the plywood ceiling, along with small cotton balls representing flak explosions, and when the light wasn’t real good (early morning and early evening), could see my planes flying around the ceiling, but not be able to see the threads they were hanging from. It is a shame that the care that he used to create this room wasn’t used in the subsequent remodelings. I wanted to see my bedroom, but there was no way to, even if Vicky had hoisted me onto her shoulders (which she would gladly have done if it would have worked).
On the wall to the right of my bedroom door once hung the picture of Echo Lake that my parents got from cashing in Green Stamps. I have that picture, having replaced the mirrors along the frame that years ago became blackened. It is now hanging in our house, one of my treasured possessions, and now one of Vicky’s too.
On warm summer nights I, Kathy, and our friends would play outside until it got dark. I don’t know what she did because she was my little sister and although I knew she was always there, paid little attention to that fact unless it was necessary. Next door lived first one of my friends and then one of hers—a very good one whose name was Mary Kay, I believe.
I vividly remembered riding my bike up and down the street, my red steel single-speed bike that I was so proud of and that I rode all over town.
I asked Vicky to take a photo of a slab of concrete under my “second story” window. I built so many model airplanes that the skies got crowded so needed to recycle them. My way of doing that was to have them die heroic deaths. I’d open the window and fly them down to the concrete slab and watch as the plastic pieces exploded all over the yard. Nobody truly understands the minds of young boys.
I peered inside the dining room and saw where my mother had her sewing machine (which I climbed up onto once and broke), and where a knick knack shelf hung that had a small sugar and creamer set that Kathy and I kept our money in that I still have (sans the money). I could see a corner of the kitchen where we ate our meals.
I had little difficulty creating images of all four of us there--of holidays, birthday parties, going to church, and watching TV. I showed Vicky where Kathy and I sat on Tuesday evenings when, for a tradition that lasted a long time, my mother made hamburgers and real French fries and sat us off of the rug with our TV trays. We then watched an evening of TV Westerns—stories of a simpler time when good and bad were clear (black versus white hats) and good always won out.
Across the street we could see a fence in the back yards of the small homes. Daily I would climb that fence and roam forever in the fields on the other side, and along the small creek that ran through it. There is a building in that first field now, but the creek is still there. Hours and hours out in those fields “hunting” with my bow and arrow, or fighting off outlaws with my trusty six-gun, playing the cowboys we watched on TV. At dinner time, my mother would step out of the front door and call my name. I could hear her from far away and would come running home.
Is it any wonder that as an aging adult, retired, that I am now roaming those same fields, although they are not just across the street and over a fence. But it is the same feeling in our camper. We aren’t playing “cowboys,” but maybe we are still playing explorers all these years later.
I called my mother to tell her of how much I could see of our life there, but her phone was off the hook. I reached her later. I called Kathy, and could tell that she could see the same visions I did even though she is hundreds of miles away. She feels the same way I do about this home, which is a connection we have that is important to me. I wanted to call my father and tell him, but that is no longer possible. He would have enjoyed it as much as Kathy and my mother.
After the Great Depression and WWII, after moving to Oklahoma, then back to Iowa, and then back to Oklahoma, my parents had been able to create for their children a life where they could thrive and never have to worry as they did as children. Our jobs, Kathy’s and mine, were just to live and grow. We didn’t think much then about what our parents did—we were children after all. But over time, we have both realized the gift they gave us in this house. The most wonderful gift you can give to children—and that is a childhood full of sweet memories. That house was the home base for so many of those sweet memories.
I wanted to wrap my arms around this house and tell it that everything was all right. That it didn’t matter that whoever owned it now was not taking care of it because we would always take care of it. It will always be a place of laughter, fun, and safety for us. It is growing old like we are all growing old, and someday we will all meet a common fate together. But it will never be alone.
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