Working on memoir the other day I realized that I can recall the floor plan of every house I have lived in since the age of five with surprising detail. This fact stopped the progress of my writing, as I was awed with the knowledge that was even possible. Houses are tied in with memories so they should impress us but there have been many houses in my life and not a one is absent.
After living in the Lincoln hotel for nearly a year, may parents bought our first Nebraska home. The address is gone but the house remains—a small two bedroom brick house which in a house poor market was a real buy. It was in this house that my mother used to tease me with stories from her moonstone ring. Sitting on the sofa she would gaze into the oval moonstone surrounded by deeper blue stones and spin stories as I snuggled near her. Perhaps my fascination with tale telling began with those sessions.
The next house was a grey pink house on J Street. It was rather dark though I do not know why. The door opened to living room with a kitchen to the right. There were three bedrooms and bathroom with green and black tile. The basement must have been finished as Mom rented it out to Gene McKay from her hometown. Memories from this house abound. Mom standing for a picture in a crop top and slacks is one and I still have the photo. Cousin Patty visiting from Ohio going bathroom in the yard as any farm-raised girl would, but the house was on the main drag so she got into trouble. But mostly the cool bedroom where I read as much as I could especially during a rough session of chicken pox.
Several years later after a brief residence in a in between house, there was another J street house about four blocks from the first. This was larger and created in me a love natural light in a house. Two floors to ceiling windows dominated the main living area one was in the front room and the other in a direct line from it in the dining room in the rear. These two rooms were large and four steps down from the rest of the house. Once again Mom rented the basement out. This is the house where Dad brought home a convertible, I watched a neighbor’s son eat the black bag worms form the trees, a possum crossing in front of the window scared my mom who thought it was a huge rat, and Mom allowed me to have a dog outside. Another memory is definitely one from era. Besides the large front window in the living room, there was one on the side of the room, which looked out to a small cement patio, which boasted a small brick wall or seat. It was there the neighborhood children would sit and watch our television through the window. Until Mom would invite them in.
Other houses, other impressions allow me to walk through the rooms once more and each house brings memories. The house in Lincoln with a built in bar and bedrooms so small a bed barely fit in them, the farm house in Missouri with a floor furnace at the base the stairs which never quite heated my upstairs room, the house in Kearney with a screened in porch that we slept in on hot winter nights (Mom yelled at Dad one night for his bright light but it wasn’t Dad but a power man on our light pole.), and several others. Each House calls up memories and I have found a fertile field to work through for my story,
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