30 days and change: DAY 3
DAY 3: Describe your childhood home. How did it smell? What was the temperature?
Word Count: 1,124
305 West St. George Street. Southport, NC 282461. My childhood address no longer holds a structure, but its memories stand in my mind decades over.
The shotgun home was built in the early ’30s by my great-grandfather Alzono Hankins for my great-grandmother Doris O. Hankins. Slightly rusty, the pinkish house stood a utopia that raised me and raised my mother, her siblings, and mine. Multigenerational home gone too soon.
My great-grandmother Doris Odessa Hankins
Grandma’s, Grandma Dottie’s, Doris’s, or whatever one of us called it, we all knew exactly where we were going. The house itself sat back from the road a bit. Three steps granted access to a corner slab of cement raised just below a small window. (Grandma’s room window) Alongside the three steps, a ramp was run for easy access to the home. Grandma didn’t walk very well. After years of hairstyling, her knees and weight impacted her mobility. Eventually, she stopped walking out of fear. Over time, her legs weren’t strong enough to hold her, so she walked with a walker for the rest of her life. Well, until she just gave up walking altogether.
As you moved toward the front door, a strip of front porch lined with green turf converted the floor, with three rocking chairs, one green and two wood, that had been structured centuries since gone. The front door, in a pale blue, granted access to a place that was all I knew for years. In the dining room stood an age-old piano gifted to my grandmother years before I was born. It was the first instrument I learned to play before using my voice as one. I can still be in the dining room as my grandmother would play and conduct her worship.
In the center of the room sat a small coffee table and candy dish that was welcoming and awkwardly not welcoming at the same time. Tiny little peppermints corralled in a crystal cup sealed with a lid were only welcomed to those who entered for the first time. But it was so pretty one never dared to take one. To the right stood a door to my grandmother’s room. It often stayed closed and hardly took visitors. But it was hers. She protected it like a naval base but nearly spent half her time outside.
My oldest brother JP and Me!
Walking further in the house, down the plastic living room runner, you’d enter the living room. Grandma’s big armchair sat to your left as you entered the room. The entertainment center was filled with VHS tapes, CDs, and other random books, and a small TV sat ahead. A 3 seater couch sat against the window to the far left, and to the right, a door to a shared space between myself and my older brother. My brother, JP, with almost 15 years in between us, had to suffer most of his teenage years dealing with his baby brother. Our room is always warm at 73-75 with a teenage boy. Looking back on it, it probably smelled like adolescent angst and dirty ass feet. I loved my brother and thought he was so cool. His high school years made me feel like I was much older than I was and much older than I am now.
Walking further in, you’d hit the kitchen. I can still smell the various scents that could come from that small area of the home. Until this very moment, I hadn’t considered the space in the kitchen to be so tiny. It’s funny how the minor things appear more prominent, and as you grow older, life oversizes you, and you realize what once seemed giant and fearful wasn’t precisely what you thought. Hmph. Now, did you catch that? To the right, a small table was set in front of the washer and dryer. I spent many days watching folks cook while I sat on top of the washer. The smell that sticks most to me is the smell of my mother’s curling irons burning the product into my mother’s hair as she prepared for work each day.
Bending the corner on the other side of the dryer stood the final door. My parent’s room door. Interestingly, their bedroom door was not traditional; it was an accordion folding door made of plastic. It didn’t lock, nor could it be slammed. I think there were some days when my mom would have loved to slam a door on my dad, knowing what I know now. Their room, a built-on addition to the home, was dark and poorly lit (and built), but it was their private sanctuary. The back door to the houses was cut off the wall in this addition, doubling as their room. It stayed littered with piles of clothes in baskets and things hanging everywhere. Thinking back, it felt more like a closet than a room, but given my recount of the space, they didn’t have much choice.
My great-grandfather Alonzo Hankins
Before I commence, I would be reminded not to discuss the ONE bathroom in the home. Recounting this makes me think about how five people across multiple generations used one bathroom without apparent fuss or complaint. However, the bathroom stands out to me for more reasons than this one alone. Remember I told you about my Great Grandfather Alonzo? I’ve never met him; he was dead before I was born, but I met him in the bathroom years later. I skipped over the bathroom cause I was unsure if I would tell this story, but here we are. For years living in the house, I would call my parents about the smell of cigarettes in the home. No one in the home smoked, so to no surprise, there were loads of questions about how I knew what a cigarette was and how I was smelling it, and no one else was. After some back and forth and questions about whether I was lying, they tested the theory. They threw me in the bathroom and left me for a while, and soon enough, I called to them for the smell. I smelled it while showering, brushing my teeth, or helping my grandmother in the mornings with her cleaning routine.
As I moved into my middle school years, I later found out that my great-grandfather died in the bathroom from a heart attack. He also smoked cigarettes in the house and the bathroom specifically. From then on out, he would visit me via smell quite often. Still, I do not know who he was and how his character showed up on earth. His essence still lingered behind. This was the first instance of my more spiritual gifts and the first shift in who I was as a human, my responsibility, and the gift, which I had no idea would continue to expand.
