When I was in – oh, ninth grade or so? – my parents decided to renovate our basement. They installed drywall, constructed built-in shelves and laid carpet. My dad being my dad did all of the work himself. And before he covered the basement stairs with carpet, he let my sisters and me leave a time capsule.
Of sorts. That really just meant we were allowed to pull out our giant shoebox of markers and draw all over the stairs.
So we did. We invited friends over to join us; I was even able to include my two best friends from Indianapolis, who happened to be visiting me in Michigan at the time. The way I remember it, we played music and spent hours writing and drawing all over those stairs.
My parents moved out of that house about three years ago, to a newer construction across town, closer to the lake. I had forgotten about those stairs, until I received a Facebook message last week.
“Are you a Bodley? I think I bought your parents’ house a few years ago.”
“Yes,” I replied. “That’s me.”
“Hi,” she wrote back a day later. “Yesterday, my husband and I were removing the carpet from the basement, and we found some notes on the stairs. We laughed. It made us remember our childhoods, as well. I think you and your sisters are going to have fun remembering that. My husband and I are going to have our first baby in August. We painted the green room upstairs; that is going to be his room.”
She sent three pictures, and all of those memories came flooding back to me. Friends’ signatures! A bold proclamation that “Jill loves Ryan!” Someone’s obvious obsession with the Backstreet Boys! (I’m not sure who that was. I was an *NSYNC girl myself.)
I couldn’t believe that this woman, who is taking apart my childhood home and making it her own, thought enough of our memories to take pictures and search for my family so she could share them with us. What a kind thing to do. What fun memories, indeed.
Jillian Wyatt 