To my surprise, since I published part one of this floor plan essay, it became the most popular essay I've shared so far on Substack. I received comments, feedback, and corrections from family and friends who also know a few things about Monmouth or about that house itself.
It's been awesome to feel so engaged, especially since I was initially hesitant to push the publish button, wondering why anyone would care about the little white house on the corner of South 9th Street and East First Avenue where I lived as a child that had fallen into disrepair.
It leaves me with some of the same questions that prompted the essay to start with: are dreamy childhood memories best left alone? If you write about them, you will get feedback from people who remember things differently than you do or have real facts to prove your sacred memories faulty.
Sometimes, the magic of what's in your head counts more than the veracity of it.
As one example, I learned that I had left out two rooms on the first floor (a breakfast nook and a small water closet.) I have not yet published the upstairs piece, but my mom has already pointed out a room up there I’d forgotten (a sewing room or maid’s room of some sort). And my dad mentions an attic some squirrels once got into that I had never even considered. As those things wander into my mind, I wonder if they are there from the power of suggestion or if I remember them at all.
I share part two of this essay for the same reason as I shared the first, in hopes it inspires others to do walkthroughs of their own childhood homes to see what they find.
Interestingly, on this past week’s New York Times podcast, Hua Hsu's, the author of the memoir Stay True, noted that he often leaves faulty memories intact in his final text after receiving feedback. After all, a memoir is about what you remember, rightly or wrongly, not about what you unearth by investigative reporting and feedback. Even Herodotus is referred to as both “The Father of History” and the “The Father of Lies.”.
Sometimes, the magic of what's in your head counts more than the veracity of it.
Upstairs
At the top of the stairs, there was a landing. Anytime there are a bunch of connecting rooms there's always some room with no purpose other than to open into the other rooms. And those rooms, unless purposed, are easy to forget. I’ve forgotten that space. It was just a space opening into the rooms I know must have been there: my parents’ room, my sister's room, my bedroom, a study, and a bathroom with a bathtub. (And the room I forgot about – sewing or maid’s room - which was in the middle of the house over the stairs.)
Straight ahead from the top of the stairs was the bathroom. It had an old clawfoot tub, and I remember taking my first baths there and brushing my teeth. The bathroom felt spacious, again with the caveat that I was small, so everything else was big.
In that room, I recall once seeing my mother bathing after her hysterectomy and asking her about the scar on her abdomen. It must have had significance since it’s the only specific memory from that room that stands out, subsumed by memories of every other bathroom that followed. It was not my only clawfoot tub. I was blessed with several more over the years.
To the right of the bathroom, taking up part of the back of the house would have been my parents’ office (my mom suggests it was a narrow “sleeping porch.”) I can only imagine that it had brick-and-board bookcases and a desk of some sort. I must not have spent much time in that room as I remember it least. I seem to recall a pipe holder with several pipes, including a corncob one, my father would have smoked a pipe in those days. I wonder if they already had the file cabinet there that stayed with the family all the way through the move in the Spring of 2022.
My bedroom was to the right of the office along the front of the house. I remember all the rooms as spacious and this one is no different. There were windows on the front and maybe one on the side, so it probably got a fair amount of light. I recall one time, for whatever reason, hanging a bow and arrow (with suction cup arrows) out the front window of the house. Perhaps to hide it because it was broken? No idea. The memory is fractured, but I’m pretty sure it’s real. I had a regular twin-size bed and for some reason wrote "I love B-----" in red pen on the bottom of the scrim, which I remember because when we moved or when my mom turned the bed over it was still there and I had to explain it away, telling my mom, "Oh, that's M----’s girlfriend’s name," as if that somehow explained it.
This room also had my quintessential closet, the one with the door I always asked to be left open or closed at night lest the boogie man was in there.
I remember playing a solitary game as a child, crashing matchbox cars together. I had a white sedan I called the David car, and I would crash the David car into the others one by one. The idea was that whichever one ended up flipped over was dead and the David car would win because I would always set it back the right way around.
This room also had my quintessential closet, the one with the door I always asked to be left open or closed at night lest the boogie man was in there. I slept alone always, never sharing a room with my sister as a child, so these childhood fears were likely intense.
My sister Amy’s room was at the back of the house opposite my father's office, and I recall initially there was a crib in there as she would have been around 2 years old when we moved in in 1969. Spacious again, perhaps even the biggest room in the house having the most floor space and the least furniture.
I recall (or imagine) my mother in there holding my sister and rocking her to sleep at night. My mother may have used the room also for some other purpose due to the extra space. Sewing room? Where did guests sleep if they visited? Did they? Surely, they must have.
I recall Amy's room was also bright, but on the back of the house, getting sun diffused through the maple at the side of the house.
The final room was my parents' bedroom at the front of the house. Here my father possibly had more brick-and-board bookcases and a pair of stereo speakers which he had wired from downstairs to bring classical music up from the record player in the living room. Here perhaps lay the origins of my desire to wire every room for sound, which became easier after Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. There may also have been a small black and white TV in this room. (I don't recall a tv downstairs.) And a double bed. I used to crawl into bed with my parents in the mornings and snuggle in the security of the space between them.
And that’s it. That's the house and all the memories I have of it. The rest is conjecture and logical reconstruction. And stuff other people told me that seems much less mine.
Someday I expect I will return to that town and find that house completely gone. Then, really, the memories will be all that remain, including one I’d rather not have of that toilet sitting in the middle of a decaying living room.