Fingerprints

My house has a fingerprint. It is a record of our lives.

When I first met my house it was clean, manicured, pretty and very similar to all the other houses in the street. Now it has something which sets it apart, a fingerprint made up of love and scratches, soap and people.

This house has taught me the difference between a house and a home.

Wherever I go, here, there is a memory waiting for me. It is as though my house saves them up and sprinkles them on me as I pass by.

The door is marked with the record of our children’s growth. Scratchy pencil marks that I will never wash off are surrounded by the fingerprints of the kids who happily measured how much they had grown since the last marking. It is evidence that the faces I have to look up to are the same as the faces that I used to bend down to kiss.

The floor in the passage is decorated with dog needles. I look at them and remember the dog careening around the corner and up the passage, shedding his pointy little hairs as he ran. His face wore a silly grin and his tongue flopped out as he capered with glee, chased by six legs, pointy elbows and a posse of giggles.

The wall in the kitchen is marked today with splatters of muffin mix. My house and I don’t mind. We watched the light come on inside my son as he realised that he could cook all by himself and produce something delicious. We know that these will be the first splatters of many. We know that they are the first bittersweet steps towards adulthood.

There is a soft scent embedded in the house. It comes from the little room that belongs to my daughter. She has a tiny room overflowing with her treasures. My house has kept her cupped in safety as she grew from Beanie Kids to perfume in just a few short years. I think the walls have grown up, too, as posters of bands have replaced posters of Tweety Bird and Princess Teddy Flower.

Sometimes I go just to sit and watch the world from the sunny spot in my ramshackle garden. The garden is overgrown and the grass is long but it is to my home that the birds love to come. There is a family of magpies who visit daily. They strut through the ragged grass peeping up every now and then just to see who is around. They play hide and tease with my dog, who can barely see over the grass himself. A speckling of sparrows plays in the shallow end, looking for tasty morsels in the ground. Whenever the sun is out there is chortling and singing coming from the yard for much of the day. Whatever I do, I do to their music.

At night time when everyone is in bed I sometimes sit quietly in the dark, just listening. The creaks and knocks of the night are my house talking to me. We sit together in peace just thinking about our day.

There might be fingerprints on every wall here, but they are small.  The fingerprint of our house is large, comfortable and protective.   It expands to welcome our friends and it contracts to hug us in safety.  Every mark on the wall and every scratch on the paintwork has helped form the ridges of the fingerprint which defines our home.  Every yell and every laugh has melded them together.  A spring clean might remove a whorl but it doesn’t take long for it to come back.

My house is my home, messy and crowded but full of life and happiness.

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About the author:

Anne Maybus is a creative writer and owner of Clever Streak, writing for small business.  Anne is also Editor of Cherry Mag.