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You can go home but can't stay
(by Barbara Christian - August 02, 2012)
WINDOW ON MAIN STREET, BY BARBARA CHRISTIAN
You can go home but can't stay
The guy who said you can't go home again didn't know what he was talking about. I did it. I went home to the house where I grew up.
You will find it on a shady street in one of Cleveland's "first suburbs." That street features a varied collection of tidy 1920s- and 1930s-era bungalows, Tudors and Capes. But the house my parents built on one of the few remaining lots there was a Johnny-come-lately colonial. We moved in a few days before Pearl Harbor.
A recent visit to the old neighborhood was not my first. Drive-bys are part of my routine when I find myself in the old stomping grounds. But I have never stopped at the house, mainly because there were no signs of life. Except this time. This time there was a car in the drive.
I drove around the block to summon the nerve and, on the second pass, pulled into the driveway, got out of the car and followed the sound of voices. There in my old backyard, seated at a shaded table, were a man and woman -- Ronnie and Tony, I would learn later.
"My parents built this house, and I grew up here," I said stumbling through a graceless introduction.
They could have asked me to leave or they could have called the police. They did neither. They greeted my announcement with open arms and big smiles. And then they offered me lunch.
Ronnie and Tony have owned the house almost as long as my parents did, and, like my parents, they raised their children there. Now they are retired and say they aren't planning to move.
They listened to my memories and laughed when they heard how the rear of their now beautifully landscaped yard was once home to Easter peeps, which, as peeps will do, grew into chickens.
Then they asked what I had hoped they would. "Do you want to come in and look around?" Would I ever. Oddly, the rooms did not look smaller, as I expected, and everything was as remembered -- the bay window in the living room, the stone fireplace and the fancy iron railing on the stairs.
The kitchen had been modernized, of course, and the milk chute, the place where we "hid" the house key, was gone, sided over by the previous owner. The milk chute may be gone, but the clothes chute remains and is used regularly, Ronnie said. It once served as an intercom by us kids, and once we used it in a failed attempt to send our baby brother to the basement.
In the basement, the half bath my dad built remains, as does the original cast-iron laundry tubs where he developed miles of film as a hobby photographer. Upstairs, the bedroom my sister and I shared is a craft room, converted for the purpose when Ronnie's and Tony's kids grew up and moved out.
The house is not large, so the tour did not take long and was over too soon. But in the time allotted, I tried to soak up every drop of the good energy that is stored in the bones of that old house. When it came time for thanks and goodbyes, Tony gifted me with a bunch of basil and parsley picked fresh from his lovely garden spot, where our chickens roamed so very long ago.
The I took one last look around, headed down the back steps past the place where the milk chute used to be and out the door ... for the last time.
Maybe the guy who warned against going home again had it half right. You can go home. You just can't stay.
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