Have you ever had the experience of visiting the house where you grew up? Or, better yet, the house in which you were born?
Most normal people, of course, were born in a hospital but no one has ever accused me of being normal. Though a product of the 20th century, I take my place with Abraham Lincoln and millions of other American worthies of previous centuries, in entering the world within the confines of a domestic structure.
The house I was born in stands at 4 Smith Street (I have changed the name), in Peabody, Massachusetts, a place I stopped by to look at recently. The first thing I noticed was a disturbing absence: there is no plaque on the side of the house to commemorate the event. What further must I do to become distinguished enough to deserve my name on a blue oval sign?
I also noticed how small everything looked. That is what people are always said to think when they return to their first house after many years away. Things appear to have shrunk, to have contracted.
Home turns out not to correspond with your imagination of it. The ceilings are not so high, the rooms so spacious, or the yard so sweeping. My birthplace definitely did not look grand enough to have produced me.
On arriving there, I walked around the side of the house, looking for signs of my past. But there were more fences and gates than used to be there. I could not see into a neighbor’s yard that I wanted to check out. The driveway did stir one association: there my father and I were playing catch in the brilliant sunlight. But was it only the photo of this event I remembered, not the actual being there?
It was a dream that drew me to the house. I dreamt about the back porch of the house and about the people next door. My grandmother and aunt, who lived upstairs at number 4, were friendly with the next door neighbors and I wanted to stir up memories of their going back and forth between houses. But a gate barred my access to that part of the house and I did not want to disturb the current householders.
I fantasized about those neighbors catching sight of me, however, imagining them welcoming me warmly to my ancestral home. But, on sober reflection, I knew better: they might even have called the cops and accused me of trespassing. The pieties of past associations may have had no place at all in their hearts.
So my visit on a warm Sunday afternoon turned out unsatisfactory. The place that occupies such a warm spot in my heart seemed uninviting and almost drab. No one cared about my being there and the place did not speak to me as my dream had indicated it would.
On further reflection, however, the visit does now say something. It stirs spiritual values that continue to loom large in my life.
Above all, that house is the place where I received the gift of life, a gift that I continue to give thanks for. And I love and appreciate my parents, many years after their deaths. My grandmother and aunt who lived upstairs and cherished my arrival also still excite in me warm affection.
It was from that house that I was taken to church for my baptism. There my father’s uncle poured water over my head and, with the Spirit’s action, drew me into the soul’s life that continues today. It would be my introduction to a spirituality that expresses the deepest meaning of my life.
That house first put me in touch with other members of my extended family and to the life of the city where I was born. My maternal grandfather, dead long before my birth, was a presence there. Born in Ireland, he came to the port of Boston where he was only 12 years old. Then he joined other family members in Peabody, went to work in a leather factory, and became successful enough that, when he died, he owned another such factory.
Perhaps the experience of dropping by my birthplace proved the old adage “you can’t go home again.” However, for me it also proved a spiritual encounter with a past rich in meaning and filled with people of grace.
Richard Griffin