The Business of Raising a Family is Messy—
and That's a Good Thing
Publisher's Page
by Reid Slaughter
"Look at all these marks," she says. "We need to have this painted." I nod in assent the way well-trained husbands do and she leaves the room. But then something happens, something that counteracts my yuppified instinct for continuous home improvement. The marks on the wall start speaking to me. Bang! I hear the sound of my little boy's blue plastic car hitting the wall (the long navy scratch), and his squeal of delight as he discovers the joys of driving at our wall's expense. Zzrrip! (the yellow mark) Part of the door jamb succumbs as a young daddyónow playing the part of a Clydesdale—pulls his kids around the house in a beige laundry basket with the rope tied around his waist and two toddlers laughing and shouting, "Giddyup!" "Isn't she lovely ..." is playing as my four-year-old daughter enters the room, her first attempt at cosmetic embellishment smeared across her face (the pink lipstick smudge). Laying there on the bed, it occurs to me that these sounds are the onomatopoeia of childhood, and the marks on our doorway represent the thousands of comings and goings of a young family. This unsightly wear and tear may not look like much to a visitor, but it is distinctly ours; a history book of our years in this house, a sort of modern day hieroglyph. On this Saturday, all around the West and beyond, families like ours are fixing up their houses. In great numbers, and with an enormous amount of irony, they will throw out old furniture, repaint worn walls and doors, and then go buy untold amounts of antiques (someone else's old stuff) or the new rage, "shabby chic" (items which are as old as this morning's newspaper but have been rendered 'shabby' with great calculation). What is it about us, I wonder, that rejects our own furnishings, our own history, for a stranger's piece or a piece with no memories at all? And why would we even consider repainting this doorway when it is so rich a testament to our family's experience? Drunk with nostalgia, and certain that I am going to impress my spouse with this spasm of sentimentality, I go tell her why I feel we should keep the doorway, and everything else for that matter, exactly the way it is. "We have 8,000 photographs and hours of video of those events," she said matter-of-factly. "And I don't need a dirty wall to remind me that we have children. But if you insist, then I guess we better not get the new big screen TV you ordered. We'll keep this old one so you don't get sad." Allright, we're repainting. But it gives me comfort to know that just under the coat of interior latex lies a cave wall of carvings, each of which echoes in my memory of happy times when fun was the most important thing, and the nicks and bumps that resulted were merely evidence that the family involved was truly and vigorously alive. |
©2001 Cowboys & Indians