While growing up in a suburb of Manhattan, I remember that in the foyer of our four bedroom Center Foyer Colonial, we had what I thought was hideous pineapple wallpaper, it embarrassed me so much that I recall bringing my hormonal little friends straight into our family room from the backdoor.
I swore that I would never do to my children what our parents were doing to us.
Of course, as Mother told me, this was, "assuming that with an attitude so surly, anyone would want to have children with you!"
Her words were wasted on me because I intended to bring my children up democratically rather than hypocritically! My children would have had something to say about the shade of 'Autumn Gold' paint that trimmed the molding in the foyer papered with of all things, pineapples!
That, one can safely assume, was long before I knew the meaning of the phrase "be careful what you wish for"!
Alas, initially, as in any house with nurtured children, from the day that our oldest child began pre-school and her siblings could in any way copy her artistic brilliance, until they finally reached the embarrassment of puberty; we had kid art in all media papering not just the refrigerator, but every room, including a not very small playroom and our bedroom.
By then, democratic wallpaper was the least of my problems; my problem was continually removing what was then non-washable crayon from the walls of our home, it became the focus of my daily existence. Until we finally found a product that covered crayon wax successfully enough so that it could be painted over, and got some blackboard paint and large round sidewalk chalk for the children, there just never appeared to be much hope about keeping the art in one room.
Admittedly, I have always been a bit idealistic.
I spent many an hour scrubbing walls, which without todays cleaning technology was then considered a decent aerobic workout! So, I rationalized that at least I could still tuck my blouses into my jeans without looking like I had given birth 5 times.
Then, during one of my sad post Christmas let down experiences. I came across a box of pictures that Charlie and I had been taking of our Christmas trees every year, in the same box I also discovered pictures of the kids opening presents, of Emmy's first Christmas on her feet, lots of Christmas pictures.
I was primarily smitten with my gorgeous trees that had a different theme every year, determining that to lift my spirits that year (and saying a quick prayer that there would be enough money in our money tree jar, as we were going through our poor but happy phase then), I would have them framed and hang them on the large, bare wall that sidled up our great big staircase.
So off I went, a kid under each arm, on the first of many determined, occasionally misled, design projects for our home.
I had each of the nine tree pictures that I found framed in a similar fashion and clustered them on the wall. Standing back, I realized that my efforts had only caused that huge wall to look emptier than it had before. So, I rummaged through every box that I could find, pulling out birth, baptismal, and first step pictures, even the kid-art that we had since tucked away until it hit me that I had finally found the perfect solution for that much maligned artwork, I would frame THAT and hang it on the wall for all of our friends and family to be charmed by!
So began what has been at times been called "that wall", "the wall of shame", and the, "I cannot believe that they would embarrass us like this", wall.
Still, every year that wall grew until we had to start hanging pictures along the upstairs hallway, calling it the bedroom gallery in order to find a more suitable name than the unprintable one that my by then middle and high school aged kids had given it.
In the years since the children began kindergarten, Charlie and I have re-decorated the house many times, sanding, painting over or replacing what, depending upon the stage of their growth, was colored on, broken, had profanity carved into it, or had been saturated with beer.
Because we also had some lean years during this time, 'the wall' was sometimes my only true decorating effort.
Over the years, we have managed to capture the many more Christmases shared by all seven Clarksons, along with various and sundry friends, significant others, and now one brand new husband; but we have also captured many simple family times that are among our greatest treasures. After all, how could we forget about the tree swing in the front yard, the play yard that replaced it and Charlie's broken arm that came with it? Or the summer that we installed the in-ground swimming pool and had the entire backyard landscaped, realizing one night that we would have to come up with a rock solid plan if we were going to keep the neighborhood population of 15 year old boys from belly flopping into it at 2 am; hence the number of young gardeners and pool boys trained on Winterberry Lane that summer!
That wall chronicles our family, as you might expect we have the usual rite of passage pictures of us all, like the picture that I took of Charlie holding 2 year old Emma on the day that he graduated from Law School, his face reflecting the relief that we both felt as we celebrated reaching the pinnacle of a mountain that we had often doubted our ability to conquer.
There is the wedding section, with ornately framed studio photos of my parents and their parents in full wedding regalia, and our own wedding portrait from the wedding that our parents had given us, and that we loved every minute of! We even have the formals from the most recent bride, our own daughter, at her wedding just a few months earlier.
My favorite part of the kid section is full of snapshots of particularly funny Halloweens, and of many birthday/Halloween parties given for our youngest, Bessie, whose birthday is the day before Halloween.
That section also contains pictures of random Saturday nights when the kids were "hacking around" and playing air guitar, singing karaoke into hairbrushes before there was ever a karaoke bar; even a series of three of our darling hormone queens all grounded during the same long weekend, regressing by playing dress-up at 14, 15 and 16, and running around the house in pigtails with gigantic ribbons. Wearing my enormous old sunglasses with bright red cheeks, arm in arm and laughing until they cried; of course, making a point that was clearly well taken as I was the one holding the camera that evening! There is also a picture of our son and some of his friends attempting to make microwave popcorn; of five 13 year old boys clustered around the microwave oven in the kitchen, baseball caps on backwards, one of them in a giant Stetson and one holding a baseball bat, all laughing, embarrassed and trying to read the directions, are particular favorites of mine. Because I remember the emotions that I felt on those occasions, I recall overwhelming joy with the girls, and profound melancholy while forcing myself to hold back and not assist those young men, who would someday probably be expected by their wives to do laundry, perhaps even polish silver, aware that I may have been lax in my duties as a good mother to a son of the next century!
As for the Christmas tree pictures that we continue to return to with their different themes each year; as we look at them now we realize that they reflect exactly where we have been in our lives every single year.
Almost everyone who visits our house now asks us questions about the wall. During our two annual parties we find sometimes it difficult to climb the stairs because there are so many people looking at it. While at times it feels like people are peeking through our closed doors, far more often than not, that wall is a source of pride for Charlie and me.
Although we have made many physical changes to our home over the years, to me the wall of pictures on our staircase is perhaps the most significant. The irony of seeing our children bring their friends into the house through the front door, especially while they were hormone hostages, has never been lost on me. To my knowledge, there was never a word of complaint from them when their friends begin to climb the stairs and ask questions. No, they have always appeared to enjoy answering them and telling stories about them; and that makes my heart simply overflow.
MB Hartzell is a freelance writer of fiction and medically related non fiction articles. She is a nurse practitioner who has retired to help her nuerologically challenged four year old grandson overcome his disabilities. Ms. Hartzell is the mother of five children, and is currently living happily in Maine with her husband Bob and grandson, Caleb who is the families newest adventurer, she is learning a great deal about what it is like to be four and to live in this great, big fun world; while continuing to hang many new pictures on the wall of her staircase!
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