The house where I grew up

I drove by the house where I grew up yesterday.

It’s in what is now a very pricey neighborhood. I noted with some satisfaction that it looked much like it did when I lived there…the yard is unkempt, the product of ambitious landscaping plans and no follow-through. Shaggy trees, lawn, nothing special about the exterior of the house except its location near the beach. Someone had actually fixed the shutters though.

The satisfaction sprang from the feeling that no one should be allowed to clean up and make presentable a place which, for so very long, had harbored the desperation of a family afflicted with alcoholism and generations of despicable behavior. No one should tidy up the remains of my childhood. The world should see this.

I can hear the shouting the crying, the police at the front of the house. I broke the rule of silence. I didn’t care what our neighborhood thought. Wrong should out. You adults behave like criminals you get the treatment.

The same hardworking, low-brow, barely literate family resides next door, forced to look at my back yard the way it always was. They’re there because Department of Defense contracts, under Ronald Reagan, allowed Mr. Neighbor to earn a ridiculously high union wage, allowing him to pursue the horrifying hobbies of hunting and taxidermy, to buy a boat and two purebred hunting dogs who received little, if any, love. I bet they hoped the new people would have some self respect hahaha.

Understand I am still a little insane from the past year. I’ll calm down hopefully.

My dad used to start building projects and then never finish them, leaving the pile of materials in the back yard. Mrs. Neighbor was certain there were rats in that pile. She would call the department of health on us. I wonder if she calls on the new owner? I feel like sending them a congratulatory letter for carrying on the tradition.

I walked on the beach for an hour as I had time to kill. I was looking for beach glass. My cd player’s batteries had died and I was grateful for I had not listened to the sound of waves in a long while. Hypnotic. The sun was brilliant and the wind burned my cheeks.

Everywhere I looked I saw the present juxtaposed atop the past. There used to be a nickel payphone in Penfield II, and we would buy French fries there, feet burning on the painted wooden deck. I sunburned badly here the summer I was 12, looking for hermit crabs and seashells. There was Nancy’s wedding on the deck, 15 years ago. So different. Am I that old?

Ghosts of all those caved-in and weathered cottages in the 60s beamed from within the elaborate, proud three-story beach homes that only the rich can afford. A host of bad storms, my mother said, had ruined all the little beach bungalows and no one had rebuilt them. How we forget.

After being treated to the CNN spectacle of Katrina gutting a quarter of the US Coastline this summer, I became inordinately grateful for a dry bed, air conditioning and a roof. I shook my head in wonder at the risk these beach people are taking. Connecticut gets zonked with a winner every 30 or 40 years, and we’re overdue. I know that the high water mark is not what it appears to be in the sand. It’s actually a few hundred feet down the road. I know that all the basements flood. This was Wolf Swamp in the 18th century.

It’s hard, knowing every crack in the pavement but not recognizing the houses. This place is my place, it’s in my bones. Every memory, happy or sad, this place built me as much as the people in my life. I know where every tree stood and still stands. I get angry at pseudo cool Audi drivers tailgating me down MY street. They don’t belong here.

Maybe someday I can move back here. Maybe I can sell my soul to the company I work for and they’ll pay me enough to pay an obscene amount of money so I can go back home again. Maybe I’ll even buy the old house. I’ll bring along a truckload of construction debris for the back yard J