The hall window in the house where
I grew up is at the top of the stairs, immediately upon reaching the thirteenth
step, and to your right. I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately, and it
occurs to me that after some thirty years, it could be permanently closed.
Stuck in the “lock” position or even painted shut.
But the
mind, the memory, provides the opening.
 |
| Copyright Ethan Jack Harrington |
It is the
summer of 1974, and I’ll be eleven in October, but for now it is hot enough to
suck sweat beads from the nape of your neck before you reach the last step. Ours
is an old clapboard farmhouse with no air conditioning, low upstairs ceilings
and plain board floors warm beneath bare feet.
The roof is
our haven.
On a clear
August night, my siblings and I are camped there by ten o’clock , eschewing beds for the damp evening air. You
can straddle the peak of that roof and ride the prairie like Captain Hook in
the crow’s nest, with the darkness spread above and below. Yard lights, far
away and isolated, glitter like scattered moon beads and the stars are a glory,
but otherwise the blackness is complete, thick and heavy.
We spread
blankets on the porch roof and lie down to inhale the bouquet of ripe field
corn and wet earth. Farm kids – our noses fail to register the stink of hog
manure, gleaning only the riches from the night. My sisters discuss boys and a
future shrouded in the mists of unreality while the transistor radio murmurs
assurance that the lion sleeps tonight. My older brother can sing like that,
but it is rare that he does, and the little brothers are pests that we chase
from our domain until we tire and they prevail. Watergate has scandalized our
nation and America ’s
youth are bleeding in Vietnam ,
but the distance to that place is mind-boggling; we are insular, contented in
our isolation. And I, the happy middle child - frosting in the Oreo - lay back
and watch the stars. Sometimes, if you look long enough, they suck you out of
yourself until you are floating, impossibly small and insignificant, among
them.
There was a
tranquility in that moment that I haven’t touched since.
We were
closer to God on the porch roof, but we wouldn’t know that until we climbed
down and grew up.
I don’t remember the last time I
was there. In the way of so many life events, the date passed unmarked, and I found
myself with a job, a mortgage, children. It was always my intent to show them
our spot, but they had places of their own – creek, sidewalk, front porch swing
– and on the rooftop they may have seen only faded and peeling shingles, the
magic dried up like dew before the sun.
In the end, it seemed that time
belonged to only to those of us who had been there, shared and understood – a
link best left to siblings alone.
