My parents have lived in the same house in McLean, Virginia since the mid-sixties. It’s an old-fashioned looking place, with white clapboard sides and black shutters, and a porch out front to watch the world go by. Just about all the other houses on the street that were there when I used to haul thick Washington Posts up their front steps are gone, replaced by much larger homes with three garages and slick architectural details. What used to be a semi-rural area, surrounded by woods and farmer’s fields, has over the years become a desirable refuge for the powerful and well-heeled elite of Northern Virginia, and the house I grew up in is next on their list.

            My dad is ninety years old, and still very sharp and active, but he fell on the ice last winter and broke his ankle, and it took a lot out of him. After years of raking leaves, mowing grass, blowing snow, and all of the other tasks that need doing on a wooded suburban lot, he had to admit that he just wasn’t up to it anymore. He also has been worried about dying and leaving my 83 year-old mother to deal with the house and its four decades of accumulated stuff. So they finally made the decision to sell the place and move to an apartment in Mclean that caters to seniors. It didn’t take long for the real estate agent to line up a buyer--a contractor with a client who wants a custom home built, on the half-acre lot that will be available once my boyhood memories are scraped off.

            So my wife and I decided to make the 700-mile drive up from Tennessee so I could take some pictures and see the house for the last time. It hasn’t changed much over the years, although the oak trees are a lot bigger, and there are now homes crammed into the back woods where we used to play. But the basement still smells musty like it always has, the kitchen is as cramped as ever, and I am amazed that my fingers still know exactly where the light switches are, even in the dark. Here was the garage where I kept the baby opossum whose mother was run over in the street, until one day the unlovable creature was gone. (I suspect my dad let it out). Here was the pine-paneled rec room where my teenage band pounded out “Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown” until my mother said she would have a breakdown if we didn’t stop. Here was the tar paper porch roof where I smoked pot with high school buddies and dreamed of the shining future that awaited me, just past the distant lights of Tyson’s Corner. And here was the bedroom where I sat for hours with my guitar, playing parts over and over until they sounded just like the ones on my Simon and Garfunkel records.

            We had a nice visit with my folks, helped them pack a few things, and my mother gave us some odds and ends to take home--her mother’s candlestick holders, a needlepoint picture from one of my dad’s long gone aunts, and a quilted art piece by my sister Mary who died of lung cancer several years ago. I took a picture of my parents standing in the driveway in front of the house, and then we said goodbye and drove away.

            In a year or two from now, I know I’ll take a ride through the old neighborhood to see what they’ve put on the lot. And I will think once again how sad and cruel the passage of time can be.