mute reminders

Sometimes I wonder how much of ourselves we leave in a house we've lived in. I don't mean the hairs, the fingernails, the lost earrings that'll live in some forgotten corner until the house is finally torn down. I mean, how much of our selves do we leave in a house we've lived in?

Our house had already raised one family, at least, when we moved in. Sometimes I think it's like an old mother, finished raising a crowd of rambunctious children, surprised to suddenly find herself handling a brand new set.

The last family that lived here had two little boys. Over the two years we've been here, I've seen trace of them here and there. On a windowsill:

And this on the kitchen counter:

And, inexplicably enough, carved on the stairs to the side door, this:

Initials I understand. Boys are boys. But the KKK is a mystery. Was there an event, or just boredom that caused a little boy to take a nail, or some other blunt tool, and carve the most sinister thing he could imagine in such a public place? I imagine he’d heard a reference to the KKK somewhere, it stewed around in his brain for a while, and finally found expression on a long summer afternoon when there was nothing else to do…

Soon after we moved in, two quiet grown men showed up to haul away some junk from a shed behind the house. Now I mentally probe my recollection of them to see if they match the part of themselves that they left here. No, those men grew up, moved on, and learned not to carve their initials in things. The boys that still live here are young, untrained, and bored. Sometimes when I’m cleaning the windowsill or the counter with the initials forever etched there, I almost think I can see them slipping around a corner with a guilty expression.

And so I wonder. How much of myself is left in the house where I grew up? Do the strangers who live there now pass a place or two in the house where a mute reminder provides a fuzzy snapshot of the child I was then? I’ll never know. The doors to that house are closed to me now. But of one thing I am sure. I never carved “KKK” in anything.