Ode to Our Home

Like pages,

bound by basement and attic,

the floors on which our lives are inscribed,

the closets and cupboards that chronicled them.

Bathroom, bedroom, dining room, den,

for the family and bodily functions.

The garage where

Ramblers and Wranglers

competed for space

with tools and Flexible Flyers

and the toboggans

curled like question marks

asking why and how and wither?

A working-class house exactly like the others,

circled wagon-like

against the onslaught of time

and the inevitable erosion

of a world in which fathers,

hatted and tied,

arrived at 6:30 sharp,

and paraded up the one-car drive

into foyers

where their children vised them at knee-level,

and aproned mothers,

dressed and curler-less after a day of ironing before soaps,

called them to a kitchen where,

with meat, salad, and vegetable,

heaven waited,

and laughter could mix with dissent.

A house

duly haunted as all old houses must,

by the staircase long buried beneath renovations,

the window from where we gazed at the neighborhood parties

to which we were never invited.

And ghosts,

teeming, thronging ghosts,

of cousins and aunts and friends whose names now evade us,

crowding the backyard with their ghost-chatter,

and the ghosts of barbecues and Bar Mitzvahs,

of homecomings and departures never portrayed as final.

The rooms where we groped and consummated,

dreamt of redemption and conceived

The showers where the ghosts can still be detected,

silhouetted in steam.

The photos we took,

the portraits we take down,

shouting, “Enough of this being dead already! Enough!”

The beds, now stripped, in which we tossed and snored, dabbled in ecstasy, and died.

The joys unequaled, the pain preserved in amber,

The countless breaths drawn in wonder, in gratitude, in sadness, and in awe.

A house indistinguishable from millions—

A roof, a porch, a lawn,

and in a million ways unique,

with walls that embraced and shrouded us,

shielded us and secreted away our fears.

For this was our house and will be

even when others’ laughter, others’ cries

invest it,

when generations of ghosts never known to us

appear and cackle and flee.

Our house—

a hallway, the doors, the trees that will outlive us all,

and the floors that will still creak

with the steps of our children’s children,

each one whispering, “Remember.

Remember us.”

Remember me, it begs us all,

our home.