“Mommy, what is that?” Sawyer holds out his hand, a small brown nut in his palm. Not the smooth shelled kind packaged neatly in the store, but rough and imperfect.
“A pecan. That’s a type of nut. Remember they used to fall into the pool in our other house?”
“No. I don’t remember that.”
We have been in our new house only a month, yet my boys have already forgotten the pecans. In all fairness, pecans are a small thing. Yet in this lapse of memory, I felt a shock of sadness. Isn’t all memory, real memory, tied up in the small details?
It is pecans in the pool and the smell of our house when we returned after a few days’ absence. My earliest few memories, from New Orleans when I was only three: playing with the Dr. Fill-and-Drill Play Doh set in our neighbor’s driveway; my father lifting me up into a wooden seat above the Mardi Gras crowd. Not the parade itself with its clamor and color, only the feeling of hands on my waist and the sensation of rising.
I’ve heard that if you loosen a butterfly from its cocoon, it will never be able to fly. The muscles in its wings do not fully develop without the struggle. A month into our new house, I feel oddly betrayed by how quickly it has replaced our old one; cheated as though some invisible membrane was cut for us. There was struggle, yes, but the transition seems too swift. The peaceful feeling of home we have somehow unearned.
When we moved from New Orleans to Richmond I was three. My parents told me I cried for days, waking at night and begging to go home. I expected that here, small faces pressed to mine in the middle of the night. Perhaps tears, confusion, talk of missing home. But we have all shrugged off the seven years spent in our old house, losing things like the memory of pecans.
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Linking up this week with Not So (Small) Stories, my weekly linky about writing craft and community. Come read a bevy of different voices!
Aw… this makes me sad as we get ready for our move (we just closed on the new house this past Thursday). I was just telling Jason the other day how sad I was that Luke likely won’t remember anything about this house, which is strangely devastating to me! Jason’s lived here 17 years, I’ve lived here 7 (and have memories here for the past 13 years). So excited about the new house we will eventually consider home, but so sad to leave a place with such a big collection of memories. Glad y’all are already making fun new memories in the backyard, though! 🙂
I think memories and learning styles and personalities are all wrapped up into their own little cocoon. Our youngest missed the first house she remembers living in, and would cry over things like bugs outside the screen on her window in the new house. The nostalgia and memories some times take months or years to grow–or even finish silently grieving over and being able to talk about.
I really love the line about the “invisible membrane,” I can totally relate!
It’s interesting what we remember versus what our kids remember. Rhea still talks about her surgery, which surprises me because she was only two.
I’d rather be longing for pecans 🙂
When I was a kid, my dad’s job took us to Paris for a year. When we were moving back–this time to Maryland, instead of Virginia–I asked my mom what language people were going to speak in our new home. I just assumed that every move meant a new language! It’s strange how transition affects us in different ways at different times, but I’d say it’s probably a good sign that your kids feel so at home in the new place. It could be that the sense of nurture and love in your family is stronger than any structure or environment. Or maybe they’re just processing slowly and it will erupt later! 🙂
I didn’t miss my old place at all when I moved to this one, ‘cos this one is so much better – no noisy neighbour and within easy walking-distance of shops.