Broken Home

“Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in” suggested Robert Frost in “The Death of the Hired Man” during a time in our country’s history when family residences changed infrequently. “I live in the same house where my granddaddy was born” is less likely now than “we moved into a bigger house in a ‘better’ neighborhood four times before I started middle school.”

Mobility is not at all what I was thinking when I drove past the home with which I was associated from 1971 when I started ninth grade until the death of my parents a few years ago. What a lots of construction going on! The three-bedroom two-bath home is apparently being transformed into a generic McMansion. A second story is being added as the entire lot is now taken up with scaffolding and CBS blocks. The home will be two and a half times bigger than when my family and I lived there.

I wish the new owners every success. But it is no longer my home and whether I have to go there or not, I will certainly not be taken in at the corner of Lincoln and Jefferson. “There is no there, there” said Gertrude Stein. In my case, there is now way too much there there. And it is no longer my there.

So I took a walk around the old neighborhood. I can’t pretend to know a great deal about what happened to the folks who lived in these homes half a century ago. But it occurred to me that I can use one sentence to describe my limited insights into each family.

Mr. Alan down the block scammed me into buying worthless stamps with the money I had saved from my paper route. With perfect clarity, it is now obvious that he used his 12-year-old son as a shill. Billie gave his father coins and “bought“ stamps so that I would do the same. At the time, I didn’t quite understand the strained looks Billie was giving his dad, but now I do. Poor kid—taking advantage of his friend so that his father could earn such modest sums. I don’t want my hard earned $.65 back. But I do want to note that Mr. Alan subsequently ended up in blistering water for becoming too involved with his children’s nanny. Apparently his wife as well as the neighborhood were hoodwinked. For a while. I guess cheating a child and a spouse aren’t too far apart.

Jorge around the corner got involved in using and selling drugs in the wild 1980s Miami. He alternated spending time in rehab and in jail. Last I heard there was a court order prohibiting him from seeing his children. His kids are grown now. I wonder if Jorge has met his grandchildren.

The Beade Family fractured. Mom, dad and two boys, the younger of whom was my best, best friend growing up. Christopher and I played endlessly together including a particularly insipid game of one-on-one soccer. Back when there was space between houses for kids to run. We swam out to barrier islands, collected sea urchins. Neither Christopher’s older brother nor their father could begin to deal with Christopher’s sexual orientation. So they didn’t speak to one another from one decade to the next. None of the following three related events has changed: my friend from growing up is still gay; his parents are still dead; he still does not visit their graves.

Speaking of obituaries, here’s one that has made the rounds on social media recently. Not about the Beade family, but I suppose it could’ve been. The truth is always stranger than fiction, because, as Mark Twain pointed out, fiction has to make sense. I quote this obit in its entirety. My poor powers as a writer could not invent anything as poignant. 

“GLENBURN – Florence “Flo” Harrelson, 65, formerly of Chelsea, died on Feb. 22, 2024, without family by her side due to burnt bridges and a wake of destruction left in her path. Florence did not want an obituary or anyone including family to know she died. That’s because even in death, she wanted those she terrorized to still be living in fear looking over their shoulders. So, this isn’t so much an obituary but more of a public service announcement.”

I don’t have a PhD in psychology but I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that Florence and her family didn’t get along especially well. I don’t imagine Florence’s resting place gets many visits or many tears. Her family’s happy memories of her can probably fill a thimble with room left over for any extra kind words.

There is nothing worse than losing a child to illness. Why would anyone choose to lose a child to your feelings about who your child should be, what your child should accomplish, or whom your child should love?

What do you want your legacy to be, gentle readers? If 50 years from now, someone had one sentence to describe your home and family, what would you like them to say? “There is the family who talked about nothing beside academic achievement.“ “That man was a thief, stole from neighborhood children, slept with the nanny.” “That man could not reign in his passion for substances; he didn’t see his kids from one decade to the next.”

Or “yeah, walking by that house, you could hear giggling all the way out to the street to all hours.” That would be my preference. A generation from now, I hope my family will be remembered as the one that played Parcheesi and “You Dog” long into the night, the family that invariably got lost on hikes, the family that frequently got stuck in thunderstorms and a huddled under an out cropping of coral rock, the family that overcooked every meal on every campout—spatially inept, imperfect cooks, poor planners, but also the family that accepted one another for who they were,

What about your family? What will be your legacy?

Fifty years from now. When your house has been torn down, when nothing remains but the memories.

What one sentence will encapsulate your heritage? Long after you are gone, when your kids are grown, what will people say about you and the way you raised your kids?