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Old Addresses Are Familial Shorthand

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 3, 2008

My brother says, "Remember 12?" and we are launched backward 57 years in time to a warm, safe, happy place. My husband always mentions 5801 with the same special smile.

To us, these numbers are important, magic, vital parts of our lives. To others they are only numbers.

Twelve Galveston Street in Washington, D.C., means nothing to you. Nor does 5801 Sixth Street in the same city. That's because you never lived in these places. You have your own special numbers. My husband and I spent our childhoods on these Washington streets and the numbers are branded on our brains like coded messages for pleasure and pain. More than half a century past being there, we can still remember the smallest details of our neighborhoods, neighbors and living spaces.

Each family has its own language for what once was home base. If I say to my brother, "Remember the tree at 12?" he knows that it's the tree in front of our apartment that served as a badminton net for me every evening of my 12th summer.

If you mention 5801 to my husband or any of his four brothers, the stories begin to spill out: the two gold stars on the window during World War II for the sons away fighting; the unheated sun porch that slept two brothers in one bed; the dining room's French doors that had all the panes of glass missing and were curtained on both sides so nobody would know.

Such are the treasures and pleasures of our childhood homes. Although we and our houses age together, in many cases they outlive and outlast us. Both of our roofs get faded and brittle, our plumbing leaks, we need repainting and things begin to creak. But a little WD-40 or five months at the gym are rejuvenating. We get refinished, refurbished and repaired, and we remain intact a bit longer. One of us disappears first. Many times the home outlasts the homeowner.

On our last visit to Washington, my husband and I decided to drive past the house where he grew up. Being native to the city, we had done this before with our children, to give them a sense of their father's history.

But this time was different. We are retired; we had the time and we were alone. There was no agenda pulling us away from the reminiscing.

We didn't just drive by. Instead, we parked and looked and talked. I asked him to tell me what had been behind each window we could see. He told me about the furniture he remembered, the kitchen, the dining room, the parties, the meals, the sad times and the celebrations that had happened there. He remembered the thrill of driving his father's car into the garage before he had a license. He remembered what the neighbors said and did and looked like.

Most of all he remembered his mother, father and brothers as they had been then. We sat for a long time.

Flooded with memories, he drove down the street to his old elementary school, his library, his junior high and high schools. He pointed out the homes of all of his old friends, the streets where they played baseball, the bus stops where he waited, the pool where he learned to swim.

The code of 5801 was broken as he shared it secrets with me.

Not everyone can go home again. Sometimes distance or decay makes it impossible. Time wears things out and entropy happens. The mortar may vanish but the memories remain intact. When families live together in a home, they are linked forever to the shared experience.

Neighborhoods age and so do we, but we are bound forever by the time we spent together.

Judy Kramer can be reached by e-mail at JudyandOz@tampabay.rr.com.

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