Measurement

Each New Year's Day Mom would line up up against the pantry doorjamb and mark our height. She'd start with whichever child was youngest that year; as the oldest child it was my job to suspend fiddly babies upright (little toes jussst touching the tiles) so that Mom could make a deeply-etched pen mark into the painted wood signifying the top of their baby-scented fontanelle.

Then, one by one, the rest of us would take our turns: heels against the wall, shoulders back ('No slouching!'), staring straight ahead as our own proof-of-like was added to the woodwork.

Each year the record was made with whatever pen came to hand, most times she would muse to herself; 'Now, wouldn't it be nice if everyone had their own color?' as she carefully drew a small, mostly straight, line.

When she was done we'd stand and marvel at the growth spurts from year to year, drawing our fingers up the wall as we traced our inky biographies. Squabbles happened, of course, as squabbles do amidst a group of five siblings.

Generally it would be the pre-K kids starting off the complaints. "Why do I only have 4 marks and SHE has 10?" They would not be truly convinced that it was because they had only been there for a New Year those 4 times. no; how could they? They remembered doing this before, so surely they should have many more?

Throughout the year, as part of my kitchen-cleaning routine, again, assigned to me as the eldest, I would wipe down the table, cabinets, counters. I'd run the damp sponge lightly over those markings. I didn't want to erase the evidence that all of us could be gathered together for such an important tradition.

For me it was up there with the Chinese food Mom and Dad would do through 'Take Out' on New Year's Eve, and the pork with sauerkraut we would make on New Year's Day. I wasn't clear just where 'Take Out' was; we did not go to restaurants in the 60's and 70's and the disappearance of my father once a year only to return with bags full of intriguing steaming paper cartons was something I enjoyed and marveled at, much as I did the cookies with fortunes that we coveted at the end of the meal.

How could someone know our fortunes, especially without ever knowing us? How could they predict what would happen in our lives?

Those cookies, though? I thought of them as I entered the kitchen of my childhood home today. Those fortune-tellers never predicted that any of this would have happened. I guess a glimpse of the real future wouldn't have sold much egg foo young and eggrolls.

The floor looked the same; burgundy, maple, and olive green asphalt tiles that had withstood hundreds of booted, sneakered, flip-floppered, and bare feet. The refrigerator was tucked into the space Dad had created when he'd torn out the small steps that once connected all of the rooms on the first floor and established a thrilling zoom-track from room to room, up the steps to the small landing and down into the entry way, then back around again.

The pass through into the back porch-TV room-piano lesson area was still there, too. The new owners must have enjoyed looking out into the back yard as much as I did when I did dishes there.

It was hard to walk into what was once the heart of our lives, knowing that it would be torn down next week.

This was the place I learned to make proper Italian gravy, where I pulled the phone cord from so that I could hide on the cellar steps as I traded secrets with my friends. The place where my mother announced I'd bought my first bra over a dinner of fried chicken, and my Dad had asked (mortifyingly) 'Why?' The place I'd make a cup of tea before heading to school.

This was the room my Mom had delivered the last slap to me for 'mouthing off' when I said I didn't need a wedding reception in the bottom of the Chapel. I was an 'ungrateful drama queen with no appreciation for anyone else', according to her. I was 19, and couldn't wait to leave this house, so perhaps she was right.

I wasn't the first to leave. I was married in December, so was not on that New Year's Day marking. Neither was one of my brothers; Pete had run away in August and beat me out of the house by a few months.

Although the room had been painted several times since the long-ago day my last mark was firmly carved into the wood, I ran my fingers over the jamb and said their names one by one while I fought the urge to carve a piece right out of wall and take it home.

We are all so scattered. Dad is gone. Mom is gone. The other four; I don't know how they are or what they are doing. Our connection is as firmly stoppered as the wall behind the refrigerator.

No one entering this house now would ever know how this room once connected all the other rooms, nor would they how it wore our names year to year. I'm sure my brothers and sisters forgot about that old ritual as surely as they have forgotten this room.

As surely as they have forgotten me. But I know, and I came back to say good-bye.