It's a paradox. When we are small the world seems so large, but when we get old the world seems so small. That's what I though when I came across a picture of the living room where I grew up. A friend of mine was kind enough to take a few photographs of that home and send them to me. They were going to demolish that home and those pictures are among the last ever taken in there. I couldn't help but think of the Christmases spent before the fireplace, pictures taken by my Dad with the Brownie camera, the big flashbulbs and waiting for a week or more to see that photo. That room seemed so large to me. At one end was the fireplace stretching wall to wall and bricks to the ceiling. At the far end was the stairs leading upstairs, so big they took a ninety degree turn to reach there. It was there, in that far end of the room the Christmas tree was set up, well away from that fireplace.
There is a story I tell about the time my dad got a new job. This job was with a plumbing concern and the owner lived uptown, you know where all the rich folks lived. He had to be rich, he had hired help! Poor folks don't hire help you know. But anyway, there came a day this man with his wife came to my house looking for Dad. There was a big job coming up and he wanted to talk with my dad about that. They were invited in. Well, this guys wife strolls in and says to my mother, what a quaint country cottage you have. I could see that look in my mothers eye, it was the same look I would get for misbehaving in public. I'm sure you know what I mean, it was, the look! Nothing was said but a polite thank you, but the fires had been lit. After they left we all heard that explosion, a country cottage eh! Well, after a series of expletives and mutterings mom just stormed off to the kitchen. I didn't speak or get too close for a few hours. It became one of those family moments retold and relived forever.
It was that story that immediately came to mind when I saw the pictures I was sent of that house. It was, in fact, a quaint country cottage. Yes, there was no doubt about that. I had the chance some years before to visit that home. I was in town for some reason, I believe it may have been my twenty year class reunion. I drove there and knocked on the front door. The lady living there remembered my mother and father from when they had purchased the house. I introduced myself and was allowed to walk through the house. I remember thinking then, seems a lot smaller than I remember. I took that stroll through my memories and the years I had spent growing up in that home. It was old, run down, and I remember thinking dark. The knotty pine that paneled the entire living room had grown quite dark over the years and upstairs the paint in the bedrooms was like, well old paint in an old house.
About that paradox. When I was growing up in that home it did seem large, the world seemed large too. I had traveled to New York City a few times before I was eighteen. That was a distance of a hundred miles! Now that was a big world out there. After high school I joined the Navy and yes, I saw the world. The more I saw of the world, the smaller it became. We have all experienced that, all having said at one time or another, it's a small world. And now that Disney song is playing in my head, it's small world after all. But, when I think about and remember my childhood home, that world remains as large to me as it did back then. I turned 72 yesterday and it's been fifty four years since I left that world. Over a half century ago. I didn't grow up in a quaint country cottage, it was house as good as those I saw on television with the Cleavers and my three sons. Sure we didn't have the financial resources those families had but my house was just as good, as modern and spacious as anyone's. A country cottage? I don't think so.
As it looked in 2023
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