Childhood home

A small white house with a screened porch and a magnolia in the front yard. Two bedrooms, one bath, a basement that was always cooler than the rest of the house in August. The kitchen linoleum had a brown burn mark in front of the stove from a pan that got set down before someone checked. We never replaced it. After we moved out, somebody else lived there. I do not know what they did to the kitchen.

What I remember best is the noise of the cicadas in late summer, and the way the screen door would slam if you let it. My mother would call from the kitchen if we let it slam too many times in a row. We let it slam.

I drive past houses sometimes that look like it. Wrong color, wrong porch, but enough of the silhouette is right that something in me will turn its head. The shape of childhood is more durable than I expected. I do not know what to do with that observation. I just keep noticing it.