The Writing on the Wall

People always say, "Read the writing on the wall," or ponder what walls might say if they could talk. Well, Fran and I finally took this advice and read the writing on the wall at our house. We listened, too, just in case it decided to say something. Initially, the writing on the wall didn't seem too insightful about what our future might hold:

Eric. Eric. Didn't seem like much, but since the wall said it twice, it must have been serious about this Eric business.

According to Wikipedia.com, the phrase, reading the writing on the wall, originates from a Biblical reference from the book of Daniel. Apparently, the King got drunk and said some things that weren't very smart (sound familiar to anyone?), and a hand appeared out of nowhere and wrote Aramaic words on the wall that had a double meaning, portending the King of Babylon's and his empire's demise. At first, the King, like us, didn't understand what the writing on the wall meant and had to have someone - Daniel, in his case - interpret what the message conveyed.

Had we not had our own version of Daniel to decipher our message, we might never have even noticed the barely-visible letters on the wood, let alone decoded its intent.

It turns out, our Daniel - or Daniels - as the case may be, are the former owners of our house, Mark and Deanna Fell, who visited recently. They owned the house from about 1991 to 1997. Apparently, the writing on the wall mysteriously appeared after their grandson ventured out to a little ledge, outside the railing on the second floor of the loft, and was precariously perched there when they discovered him.

The couple, who now live in Arkansas, said this was their favorite home of all the houses in which they ever lived. Along with the story of the writing on the wall, they told us about all of their other memories here.

Building the waterfalls that we still hear from our bedroom in the summer...the two cougars up on the deck, getting into the grill....how their 13-year-old daughter lived in the basement, because she needed to get away from her parents...and put posters up on the stairs, because she thought her mom couldn't see her that way...but the mom could see her anyway...how they used to have a wood-burning stove, where we now have a pellet stove...that there used to be plexiglas on the windows...and carpet on the floor...but the back bedrooms were basically the same...that the French doors in the basement squeak now just like they did then.

"Do you still see elk?" the man asked. "Just look at this view," said the woman standing in loft. "Every way you look it's beautiful."

I can remember being little in Wheeling, W.Va., when my dad took me and my sister to see the house he grew up in on Poplar Lane. He just marched up to the door on the big old Victorian and said that he used to live there as a kid and could we come in. I think the people were freaked out, but we took a picture on the front porch anyway.

And my mom had a hard time going by my grandma's house after it was sold and completely remodeled, because it's changed so much from how it was when she grew up in it. It's sad to think, but the dogwoods in the front are likely gone now and who knows if the azaleas are still there. Or the screened-in porch in the back, where my grandma would sit and read The New York Times, the bird-feeder outside the window at her kitchen table, the orange-and-aqua room, where my sister and I would stay, the attic, which, no matter how many times you searched it, would always yield some treasure that you never saw there before, and the black-and-white pictures of relatives that lined the hallway.

It's interesting how much people's homes mean to them. I guess it's because they are physical reminders of so many memories. Inanimate, yet alive with the smells and laughter of the people who once lived there.

The other night, sitting at dinner, Fran and I talked about how many houses we have grown up in. Fran has lived in four houses; I've lived in two, but only one I can remember.

A lot of big events in our lives have happened in the places we have called home. I had an apartment in Elmhurst, Ill., right by the railroad tracks, where I lived during the first year of my first real job out of college. Fran and I got engaged on the front porch of our apartment in Boulder, before it was completely built. And when I'm in Chicago, I always have a strange urge to check out my old haunts in the city, despite some of the bad memories I have associated with them.

Of course place means something, but home, for some reason, means so much more.

I wonder what people are looking for when they visit the homes in which they used to live. Are they looking to recreate or relive memories, triggered by the sight of something written on the wall? Do they want to see if the house has changed as much as they have since they lived there? Or has it stayed the same, preserved like a museum, honoring the life they once lived in that place.

After thinking about all of this, I don't think Eric, the writing on our wall, is a bad omen at all, as the saying has come to mean these days. Instead, it reminds me of what Alex says at the end of "Everything is Illuminated," one of my favorite movies:

I have reflected many times upon our rigid search. It has shown me that everything is illuminated in the light of the past. It is always along the side of us, on the inside, looking out. Like you say, inside out. Jonathan, in this way, I will always be along the side of your life. And you will always be along the side of mine.