Day 249

White clouds and white horse.

We are made of memories. And so much of what we remember takes place in or around our homes and the houses of our friends, and the buildings where we work, so that all this architecture exists as part of the many and varied maps in our heads.

I can walk in the front door of 10 Forest Drive, the beloved house my parents bought just before I was born, and which they left only when I was in my late 30's.  I can hang my school hat on the coat-pegs, step into the lounge and see my  mother doing needlework there, with the sun streaming in at the leaded-glass windows.  Up the stairs which were first bare and later had carpeting, are our rooms, with colour and character and familiarity.  Home.

I went back there in 2003 and introduced myself to the people who lived there.  They were so sweet, with three children as well, and proudly led me on a tour of the house, with all its additions and improvements.  Everything looked so much smaller than I remembered, and I laughed to see, still engraved on the door to what had been my brother's room, the letters P I G, which I carved there once when he had gone too far and enraged me with his strength against which I had no armour.  It had been painted over, probably quite a few times, but  was still quite visible.  We never forget places, and I wonder if they perhaps retain something of us, the laughter lingering in the walls, the arguments stuck in the thatched roof, the music of the piano still reverberating somewhere in the floorboards.

And 16 Cross Street, with its bright colours, a spring-green lounge and vivid chairs, the worn step, the purple curtains I made with patterned strips on the bottom, the clerestory windows in the big hall which took on many different roles at different times while we lived there, bicycle and laundry room, lounge, dining room, family room.  The murals on the walls, the happy days, the hot summers swimming in the sky-blue pool, the enormous pecan-nut tree, underneath which the girls and later the boys would sit for hours cracking open little stacks of nuts they had collected.  Surely that house remembers us, so much life, so much creativity, so much noise, so much sex and love.

My friends have just bought a new house, just moved in, and we went there today to help unpack boxes and move some furniture.  Although mostly we sat around and ate and talked and admired the sweetness of their grandchildren, who arrived to have lunch with us and to enchant everyone.

So they will begin the task again, of pictures on the walls, dreaming in the sun-dappled lounge, making meals, living their lives, filling the house with their presences, enlarging the maps in their heads.

My newest little god-daughter, Clara.  What long fingers, what sweet little fat wrinkled arms.  What an honour.