Seven Questions to Write About the House You Grew Up In, One Corner at a Time

Did the front door of your childhood home open inward or outward? Was the latch up high or down low?

Thursday night, I sat at the kitchen table with a cup of ginger tea gone cold and a blue ballpoint pen in my hand, and realized I did not remember. I lived in that house for eighteen years. I teach all day, forty small faces in front of the board, and only at this hour do I get a place to sit quietly, yet the simplest question about my own house had no answer.

Some things about an old home stay very clear, a smell, a sound, while others cannot be recalled even after passing them a thousand times. Both are telling you something. This is seven questions to write about, going from light to deep, each with a hint for when you are stuck. No need to write well, nobody reads it but you, and anywhere you are not ready to go, you can simply stay outside the door.

This is not a piece for working out who was at fault in that house, and it is not for remembering a childhood as lovely as in a film. Every home has bright spots and dark ones, and writing about one corner does not oblige you to reach a verdict on the whole house.

Why is writing about the house easier than writing about the people in it?

I tried writing about my parents first. The page sat still for twenty minutes, the ceiling fan turned evenly overhead, and I managed one word and crossed it out. Two voices in my head took turns: "write something already" and "anything you write will be wrong." Then I switched to "the window in my room" and wrote a whole page without stopping, my hand moving faster than my head.

The easiest explanation is that objects do not argue back, so writing about them is lighter. Sensible, but not enough. That window never stood alone on the page: next to it was the bed, on the bed was a person who liked to sit reading the newspaper, below the window was somebody calling me in for dinner. The house holds the things I have not yet said about people, like whose chair it was, who tended to stand where, whose voice came from the kitchen. Writing about the house is a way of going around to the person, without having to look straight at them from the first line.

I realized it when I got to the cane chair on the porch. Every afternoon Dad sat there, a newspaper folded in quarters in his hand, his feet up on the crossbar. I wrote as far as the word "Dad" and stopped, because the chair suddenly had someone in it. Nothing momentous was on the page, only a cane chair and a newspaper. But that was where I knew I had gone around far enough to reach a person.

You can tell you are ready when you sit down and do not yet feel the need to do anything else. The first time I felt awkward, kept wanting to get up and pour more water. After a week, some people find handwriting slower but clearer, others still find typing easier, and both are fine. On a busy day, just pick one question, write for five minutes, then close the notebook.

There is a temptation that is very easy to follow: writing to reach a conclusion, something like "so in the end was our home happy or not." It is tempting because everyone wants a closing line, but a closing line often turns the rest of the page blank. Instead, write like someone holding a camera, panning from the doorway inward, noting whatever you see, with no commentary yet.

Seven questions, from the doorway to your own corner

I texted my younger brother before writing.

— Did our front door open in or out back then?

— Out. You had to pull hard, and it screeched like a train.

— Right, I remember now. Thanks.

Three lines of text and my page gained a whole afternoon, the sound of iron dragging along a track and a door handle with its blue paint peeling. Below are the seven questions I wrote in order. You do not have to follow the order or do all of them in one evening.

1. What does the front door of your home look like, and what sound does it make when it opens?

No need to remember accurately. Where you cannot remember, write "I don't remember," which is also an answer.

2. Where in the house is there a smell you recognize at once, even with your eyes closed?

The smell of the kitchen, of detergent, of sun on a blanket, of old paint. Write down the smells you disliked too.

My answer to this one was fish simmered in caramel at five in the afternoon, mixed with the smell of laundry soap from the back yard. Those two smells had never stood side by side in my head until that Thursday night.

3. What time of day is the house loudest, what time quietest, and where are you usually then?

Try writing it in stretches: early morning, noon, dusk, after dinner.

Mine: six in the morning is loudest, the tap running, flip-flops slapping, people calling to each other from next door. Two in the afternoon is quietest, only the ceiling fan and the wall clock ticking. I was usually lying under the table reading comics then.

4. Which corner is yours alone, even if it is only the space under the stairs or a doorstep?

If there was no corner of your own back then, write about the place you went to be by yourself.

5. Which object in the house is still there today, and which one is gone but you still remember?

Two short lists, three things on each side is enough.

Mine: still there are the wall clock, the shoe rack and the starfruit tree in the yard. Gone are the cane chair, and the wind chime made of snail shells that I built when I was ten.

6. Is there a place in the house you tended to avoid, or walk past very quickly?

You do not need to write the reason. Just write where that place is. If it feels heavy, stop here, and go on to the last question when you want to, which might be another day.

7. If you walked into that house now, what would you want to say to the child sitting in your corner?

One or two sentences. No need to fix anything for that child, only to be there.

I wrote: "Let me sit down next to you for a while. I cannot fix anything, but I can sit beside you." Afterward it felt strange, because I had never once spoken to myself the way an older sister would.

When you have written a few, read them back once. The place where you wrote the most is not necessarily the most important one, and where you suddenly wrote less is also worth noticing, even if you do not need to understand why yet. I found I had written a whole page on question four, the back doorstep, then only three words for question six. I did not try to understand those three words. I underlined them and left them there.

A week later I opened the notebook again. The pages written in the middle of the night read awkwardly in places, and in other places made me laugh alone in the kitchen. Some people find they want to write more, others feel once was enough, and neither is wrong. What I kept was not any particular page, but the fact that I had looked at the old house longer than usual, and it had not asked anything of me.

If you want a lighter set of questions to warm up with, there is seven questions to write a thank-you to yourself. And if all you have in the evening is five minutes, writing three lines before turning off the lights holds the same idea, at a smaller scale.

If you try it and it does not work

There are two reasons that come up often.

The first: the blank page sits there and no question will move. Then do not push at question one. Choose question four or question two, whichever is easiest to see, and let yourself write exactly three words, then stop. Three words count. If handwriting makes you restless, type, or read it out loud into a voice memo.

The second: you finish writing and feel heavier than when you started. That happens, especially with question six. Close the notebook, stand up, wash your face or drink a sip of water, or message a friend you trust. No need to finish tonight, and no need to finish ever.

There is one more thing I want to say separately. If what you remember about that house is being insulted, controlled, threatened or hit, that is not something to forgive or be generous about through a writing exercise. Talk to a professional or a friend you truly trust. And if sadness from those memories lasts several weeks and affects your eating, sleeping or work, it is also worth speaking to a professional, without waiting until it becomes too heavy.

I finished question seven close to eleven. Exactly three lines, and I did not read them back. The ginger tea had gone fully cold, but I drank it anyway. Gently, no rush, and then I turned off the kitchen light.