Triangle

Today I spent several hours with my friend Diane, my second sister, friend from way back. We ended the evening with a visit with her Aunt Rachel and Uncle Jack; I haven't seen them in so many years, I have lost count. We sat around at their house talking, looking at pictures. About halfway through the visit I had to use the bathroom.

As I reached for the toilet paper, I noticed that the holder was a ceramic one built into the tile wall. It was pastel blue and at the center of the top, was a little, raised triangle.

The sight of that triangle did something to me. It shot me right back to my old bathroom, the one in my Oak Park house, the same, only pink. It had the same exact triangle design, and seeing it again gave me a strange and nice feeling.

The triangle is not something I have ever thought of once in the 23 years since since I left home. It is a completely innocuous blip on life's radar, a meaningless ceramic shape not really worth the energy a thought would use up. After all, why think about a triangle on a toilet paper holder? Could there be a consequence for not ever having a thought about it ever again?

The answers are obvious, so then why did the triangle evoke such a strong feeling in me? I guess because it comes from the first place I ever knew, my house, the place I knew better than any other place I've ever lived since. On my bedroom closet door was an eerie, natural mark in the wood which made me think of a ghost when I was small. I was a bit (oddly) embarrassed about the weird light switches we had; instead of flipping up and down, they were little round knobs which clicked softly side to side; the windows opened sideways too, instead of up. We had a couple of doors which slid into the walls and disappeared instead of just swinging open and shut, and since the front of the house faced the busier street and we were on a corner, we parked on the side street and always entered and left through the side door instead of the front one like everyone else. And there was a truly creepy room in the basement under the stairs. Our house was a cool place - sturdy and strong, small and just right.

I have been gone from there for many years and the triangle suddenly, unexpectedly, brought me home again. I liked it. I am grateful to have moved on to my current toilet paper holders, none of which are built in, but rather after-market screw-mounted pieces, but I have also never gotten to know and understand a house I've lived in as well as I knew my first. I have found no good reason to creep around the basement looking in nooks and crannies, and I have not become at all well-acquainted with closet floors or the highest shelves. Robert Frost wrote: "Home is the place where when you go there, they have to take you in." I firmly believe that, because even if your people are no longer there, the house, your home, does that job on its own.