Home Memento

Memento: something that serves to remind you of something that happened in the past.

What do you call your childhood home? I googled it. I came up with family home, childhood home, and the house I grew up in. It seems as if there should be a word to describe it. I have decided to call it a homento. A portmanteau of home and memento. It’s a house that serves to remind you of things that happened in the past. Perhaps you are one of those people who still live there meaning it is still your home. I can’t even imagine.

I moved away from my childhood home when I was about to turn five years old. I was a military brat so we moved quite often. I can recall fourteen different houses before I was sent back to the states ten years later to live out the rest of my high school days. I married too young and had a baby right away. Maybe because I felt like I never had a real one I was anxious to start my own home. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out. In 1983, my barely crawling baby girl and I moved in with my best friend, Janell. Janell was living with her mom, stepdad, and stepbrother, Mark. They had moved into a big old house after Janell’s grandma had passed. (The one in the cover photo is not the exact house but very close in appearance.) It was built in the early 1900s in the small Indiana city of Marion. It was the Neoclassical style that was very popular in that time era. The house had always belonged to Janell’s family. When I first met her, her conservative grandmother lived there with a tenant in the upstairs apartment, a flamboyant gay man who owned several large snakes. I guess he was polite and paid the rent on time. He was very friendly and was proud to show off his snakes.

We young adults stayed in the upstairs apartment but also had access to the downstairs whenever needed which is where we congregated to watch TV. We often sat on the railed wrap-around porch and catcalled our bachelor neighbors who lived in the upstairs apartment across the street. Why did they always have their window open? Once Janell was wearing a pair of cut-off jean shorts and hoisted herself up to sit on the wooden railing promptly getting a huge splinter stuck in her butt. She had to go to the doctor to get it out. She doesn’t remember.

Soon we were joined by Mark’s sister Kathy and then a (really cute) Belgian exchange student, Jos. Ranging from 16 to 20 in age, things were always interesting. We didn’t really have too many wild parties. There was the one on New Year's Eve during which Jos had a little too much to drink and swore he was in love with me and had to be restrained from showing me how much. Everyone knew I had insomnia when they would get up in the morning to freshly baked cookies. There was no central air or air conditioning so summers were HOT. In more ways than just weather-wise. We only had one bathroom upstairs with no shower just an old-fashioned claw tub. There were arguments, but there was a lot more laughter. Secret loves that turned out to not be so secret after all. I think all of us cried from a broken heart in the house at one time or another, most of us anyway. There was the time when I woke up and was scared to death by what I swore was a goblin/ghost sitting on my chest in the dark room. After that I refused to go upstairs by myself which meant that someone, usually Janell, had to walk me upstairs after TV to make sure nothing was going to get me. She grumbled about it, but she did it anyway. It didn’t help that she told me the story of her great-grandmother dying by falling down the basement stairs. Apparently, great grandma had gone to the bathroom in the middle of the night and mistook the basement door for the bedroom door which was right next to it.

Above all the old house was filled with music. We all had different tastes in music but it was the eighties so there was something for everyone. Def Leppard, Air Supply, Talking Heads, The Cars, Bon Jovi, and others were the soundtrack of our lives. I have a Homento playlist here.

Why am I waxing poetic about my homento? It was demolished this past weekend. Janell, the only one of us who still lives in the area, texted me this morning to let me know.

Her parents had sold the house in the late nineties and moved to their dream house they had built in the country. Homento passed through several owners after that and fell into disrepair. I used to drive by it when I would come to visit Janell. I could see my homento languishing. It didn’t prepare me though for the sad sight I saw when I looked it up on google maps today. I would like to think that the happiest memories that house ever had were the times we spent inside of it.

That homento was one that was always in my heart. I don’t need a physical homento to reminisce but there is a hole in my heart today. The memories are still with me though and I can close my eyes and imagine myself washing the dishes, Jos drying them, Kathy chattering about her boyfriend, Janell dancing to the song on the radio, and Mark bouncing baby girl on his shoulders. Thank you house. I miss you.