Important things live on in memory

The Boston Globe

Beverly Beckham

My friend Rosemary is moving, packing up and downsizing. It's the American way. You scrimp and save to buy a house, spend a lifetime scraping and scrubbing, replacing and renovating, decorating and landscaping - and then you sell it. I wanted to say goodbye to Rosemary's big old house, stand in the foyer one last time, and breathe in the smells of old wood and new books and whatever was brewing in the kitchen. So I called and asked, "Can I come over?" But Rose said, "No. Richard and I are still packing."

They have been packing for weeks - piling, sorting, arguing, and choosing. But despite all the giving away and carting things to the dump, they are still surrounded by more things. "It's as if we've done no packing at all," Rose moaned.

They aren't going far, Newton to Arlington, just 10 more miles away from me. I rarely visit her anyway except on holidays and for parties and to dig up something lavish from her garden. Ten miles won't change this. So why do I care that she's moving?

Rose and I have been friends since second grade. We played together. We even double-dated. The first time she moved anywhere was away to college, but this was temporary. She returned every few months and there we were again up in her room talking and laughing or in my room or at one of our kitchen tables.

And even when she was gone, she wasn't really. Her parents were home, the porch door open no matter how cold, the yellow tractor in the middle of the field, clothes hung neatly on the line. These things were anchors.

In 1968, when we were seniors in college, we both got married, first me, then her. We were so engrossed in our new lives that we didn't think much about our old ones. Sleepovers. Wearing each other's clothes. I never missed my childhood house and the life I lived there until my father suddenly sold it. And I didn't miss Rosemary's house until her mother died. After this, after 1971, there was no going home again.

It's not what you take from a house but what you leave behind that are the real treasures. This is what I've learned. Things that can be packed, the dishes and photographs and Christmas ornaments and old report cards - mementoes - are not what you ache for. What you want is what you had: a day at Rosemary's. Her father at the table, her mother making lunch, dolls and doll clothes on the living room floor. A single summer night. The view from my bedroom window. The smell of cut grass and Prince Matchabelli, my mother's cologne. The click of her heels on the hardwood floor. The sound of her singing. Our dog, Buttons, thumping his tail. My father whistling.

I went back to my childhood home once, years ago when my children were young. It was summer and the people who owned it invited me in. I searched for something, anything that was familiar. But the floors were carpeted and the walls painted and the kitchen redone. Even my bedroom was different, paneled and with an air conditioner in the window. Nothing that I was looking for existed anymore, though the grass smelled sweet and there was music in the air.

Sometimes, something in a house prods a memory. A sound. A scent. Footsteps on a hardwood floor.  But a house doesn’t preserve the past. Only our memories can do this.