Listening to Memories

Driving home down Golf Road today I noticed that a house had been torn down. Behind a cyclone fence erected for construction safety the rubble and remains of what used to be someone's house could be seen.

The sidewalk still led up to a set of three concrete steps which entered what used to be someone's home, someone's life.

As I continued driving I heard some of the memories that the home was playing for itself. Listening with sadness to the memories that would no longer take place or be created anew.

A baby was crying as the mother shuffled in her nightgown and slippers down the hall to his bedroom to comfort him and help him fall back asleep.

From the kitchen, as the father was preparing Sunday brunch, the smell of bacon was wafting up the stairs into the bedroom of the still sleeping mother and children, followed by the smell of bitter, freshly brewed coffee.

Loud music filtered out from under the door of the teenager's bedroom and worked its way into the living room below and into the aggravated nerves of the parents trying to watch TV.

Cords of "Happy Birthday to You" from the upright piano and words sung slowly like a funeral dirge accompanied the homemade, buttercreamly decorated cake that had come out of the oven earlier that morning.

Silence and darkness communicated with the rooms as the family slept peacefully until the first alarm clock on dad's night stand clanged everyone in the house awake.

The refrigerator, close to empty anticipating shopping day, sported four neatly lined up brown paper bags filled with sandwiches, chips, fruit, and a cookie, each one labeled for pick up and a trip on its way to school, the office, the job.

Raised voices, adult voices, disagreed and argued. Quieted listeners, children listeners feared the anger and wished for its stopping, again.

The monsters in the basement continued to haunt the youngest brother as he quickly ran up the stairs carrying the jar of canned tomatoes requested by his mother.

Hair clogged the sink, stains surrounded the toilet bowl, and the shower continued to drip, drip, drip as the family of four waited their turn to ready themselves for the day and again to prepare themselves for the night.