Afterthoughts on Walnut Street

Some streets tell you where to go.

Turn left on Broadway.

Take a right on Grand.

Markers pointing the way.

Walnut Street was my destination. The street where my house stood, where I grew up and lived until I was twenty, when I left home to begin my own life.

A house made of brick and mortar, yet it breathed in and out like a living thing.

It wasn’t bricks and walls that made Walnut Street a home. It was the people who filled those rooms.

My brothers laughing outside Dad’s bedroom window, waiting until he jumped out of bed and ran outside to chase them. Mom threatening us with a wooden spoon if we didn’t behave. Friday night shrimp boils and racing our lobsters down the galley kitchen floor before dropping them into a pot of boiling water.

Summertime, my brothers and I swam until darkness came. After a long day in the pool, we stripped off our swimsuits, hung them on the fence outside to dry, and fell asleep with wrinkled fingers and wet hair. The house grew quiet. Sleep rescued us.

Days turned into years as my brothers came and went, carrying their stories in and out the front door.

It wasn’t until weeks, even months, after I finished writing Walnut Street that more memories came back to me.

I forgot to write about that.

There were still pieces–no, chunks–of memories I had tucked away. Details, conversations, feelings, and images that surfaced when I least expected them.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. I disagree. A memory is worth more than a thousand words.

As Buzz Lightyear would say, “To infinity and beyond!”

I don’t have a single photograph of my entire family together. The only one I have of all five brothers and me was taken on my wedding day. We stood together at the altar, side by side, all of us in one place, one family. I treasure that photograph. But what I treasure more is the memory behind it.

Despite our differences, they showed up. After the wedding reception, all of us gathered back at the house on Walnut Street.

More than a hundred people had gathered at the reception, but Walnut Street was different. It was a small house where you bumped elbows. There was no place to hide. You were there. You were seen.

The manuscript is finished.

The memories remain.

They don’t shout.

They whisper.