To Etch A Beloved Space
It’s been twenty years. Twenty years have passed since I purchased my first home. I’ve lived continuously in this space for longer than in any other place that I’ve inhabited — even the homes where I grew up.
What have I learned in this time? So many things, large and small. I’ve shared this space with women I’ve loved (and still do). But, relationships fall away for a myriad of reasons and I’m reminded of the lessons learned when I recall who it was that placed a certain artwork on my kitchen wall or I walk into an upstairs bedroom and catch the faint scent of perfume. (When left alone, I’ve never felt the need to sterilize the space they occupied. It’s all part of the residue of life.) And I’ve learned just what parts of the floor creek in every room and why I must always disconnect the garden hose before the first freeze and where to look if I want to catch a glimpse of this season’s mouse when I flip on the kitchen light.
In twenty years, you really tend to fill a space, each and every room. You don’t fear the dark because you know right where everything lies. You remember that it’s time, again, to paint the railings in the front and back so they won’t rust. You know to flush the toilet you never use in the basement while you’re sorting the laundry and when to replace the batteries in the smoke detectors regardless of whether or not they’ve alerted you.
Of course, it’s not all a matter of routine. Photographs capture the fleeting moments of dinners with family and friends. Pictures of proud parents sitting in the backyard beneath the sunflowers while I grilled the steaks. And the images of my dogs. I’m on my second currently and she curls on “her couch” while I write on the loveseat. My first dog, Sammie, passed suddenly one Friday afternoon after collapsing on the kitchen floor. I carried her from that space and delivered her to the vet who had given her a clean bill of health just two weeks prior. With tears in my eyes I demanded to know what happened but there was really no controversy. He later found that she had a tumor that no standard check-up would have detected and…she just died. I still keep her photo taped to my desk in the office but seven months after she was gone I visited the Humane Society and found Ellie. She was no bigger than my hand and a woman had rescued her from a recycling dumpster on a frigid February night. Someone had tossed her away, but now she shares my space with all the territorial privilege a dog could possibly seek.
I don’t believe in ghosts. I was raised an atheist by an atheist who was the son — you guessed it — of an atheist. I was brought up to believe that my life ends with my physical death. It’s simple and clean and not nearly as grim as some would have others believe. A true atheist seeks purpose in life and wants to make the most of their time. And, quietly, part of them welcomes the idea that they might one day do…something…that will serve to memorialize the time they’ve spent on this planet. Maybe they’ll build some monumental space. Or, perhaps, they will simply live within one so thoroughly that they might etch themselves upon it.
This brings me back to ghosts: I don’t believe in them, certainly not in the way they’ve been depicted, but I definitely love the notion. The idea of a desolate soul thrashing about on the physical plane as a means of addressing some grievance is certainly seductive. As a boy I read every “true ghost story” I could get my hands on but I came to notice something: The accounts of actual ghosts weren’t particularly compelling. That is, I found no firsthand stories of any Jacob Marley woefully urging anyone to change their ways. No credible tales of any ethereal butler from the Overlook Hotel conspiring to drive the living mad. I mean, it’s possible that ghosts are simply too good at covering their tracks, but the testimonies I read suggested something different. They led me to conclude that ghosts don’t engage the living. In most cases, they don’t even acknowledge them. Rather, a ghost will simply go on about its business in a fashion that tends to recur. Eye witnesses talk of encounters that seem more like viewing an old newsreel that periodically repeats. “The woman, dressed in Victorian Era finery, walks the same hallway and stands at the same balcony in every sighting.”
That’s not a haunting, it’s an etching. Animated, perhaps, but the remnant of a presence that has etched itself on a space it knows quite intimately. Perhaps the ghost had walked the hallway for years, or even decades.
Does it take twenty years? Does it take twenty years of laughter, tears, fragrant sex and warm celebrations, horrendous shouting matches, drunken fiascos and exhausted Friday evenings after a long week’s work? Have I worn myself into this space? Have I scratched my routines into the air that flows through the living room, the hallways, the stairs to the second floor and the bedrooms throughout? This atheist finds himself wondering about this. Will there be that moment, one day far in the future, when a hesitant child climbs the stairs after dark and gazes down the hall into my sunroom to catch a flickering image of my frame obliviously attending to my spider plants? Perhaps I’ll haunt this space…and the thought of it makes me smile.
