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Memories echo in house grown too big
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Published: February 21, 2008
My house feels too big. Not like a suit hangs on you after you've lost some weight, or a hat feels too big to sit right on your head. Just that there doesn't seem to be enough of me to go around all of these rooms.
There's more than just me involved, of course. My wife (who thinks this column is all about just me) seems to experience the same sensation, if not quite so acutely. This is our personal variation on the "empty nest syndrome," when all of your children have finally vacated your premises and empty bedrooms serve as ghostly reminders of their once-active presence.
My wife and I have long aspired to that goal, shooing the fledglings from the nest, making our children accountable for their own lives. We were going to be different from those other baby-boomer parents who couldn't let go of their offspring -- we were looking forward to our independence.
Welcome to reality. There are plenty of cracks in our pedestal. Our elder son lives the life of a political-campaign gypsy: nine months in Iowa, a heavy work/heavy nightlife stint in Nevada, and now off to New Mexico, always in pursuit of the electoral brass ring.
When there's no campaign going on, he comes home. And other than a storage unit on Burke Street, this is the only home he's got. Our tough-love philosophy moves out, and he moves back in when necessary. Luckily for all of us, electioneering seems to be almost a year-round activity, so as long as duty keeps on calling, we'll get along fine.
That still leaves a bunch of rooms that I rarely frequent other than when looking for my or my wife's glasses. (Maybe I shouldn't use "rarely" so breezily -- our glasses get lost a lot.) Other corners of the house seem lonely, bereft of the company of three competitive siblings and their numerous friends.
So I wander like Miss Haversham through an edifice that feels too quiet, too serene and just too damn relaxing. Don't get me wrong -- I am blessed and fortunate to be living in what many people would consider a mansion of sorts. We have a big wild backyard and a meager little bit of a creek, and in many ways I feel like a very lucky guy.
But my house doesn't reflect that. It feels more solitary, existing on its own whether we're all there or none of us at all. You want to feel that you truly inhabit your dwelling, that it is both an invention and an extension of your collective character as a family.
That reality I mentioned above means the phone doesn't ring nearly as much (we are still land-liners living in a mobile-phone world), the lights aren't always being left on, weird food containers don't fill our refrigerator and someone's purse is not always on the kitchen table.
I really didn't think I would miss all this, but the house serves as silent reminder of the past. Our two boys didn't even grow up or attend high school here, yet we each ceremonially bestowed a bedroom upon them, and they dutifully moved in their stuff. Now it collects dust.
We've looted their rooms over the years outfitting various cabins, yet they remain evocative of their namesakes. My daughter's bedroom is now shared by my little home-theater operation, but she's too infrequent a visitor to complain about the situation.
Every time I get self-pitying like this about how lonely my wife and I are, our house suddenly fills up, as it did last weekend with all three children home, one in the company of a serious girlfriend. There was wonderful cacophony, too much or not enough food, endless movie watching and subsequent debates about their pros and cons. And then more food, and its pros and cons.
The house seemed much smaller.
■ Dale Pollock, a former dean of the School of Filmmaking at the N.C. School of the Arts, teaches film there now.
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