In the house where I grew up –

Hang on. I started to write  “In my house,” but it’s no longer my house, and hasn’t been for fourteen years (eighteen if you count college). My parents left it for another state twelve years ago, so it’s not even attached to anyone in our family. But it’s still my house … isn’t it?

The fella always refers to his family’s house, in which he grew up and his parents still live, as “my house.” I tut-tut and feel put-upon and ask him if the house we share isn’t his house. But suddenly I get it.

Anyhow. In my house, the one where I grew up, there was a room we called the parlor, as I’ve mentioned before. We lived in a Colonial dating to the late 1700s, a true New England original with wide pine floorboards and fireplaces big enough to cook a pig in and wooden doors with metal latches that never quite hung straight.

The parlor was one of two front rooms that flanked the front door — a door we almost never used. This door must have been frequently used at some point, because it had a hitching post next to it when I was very little. The hitching post rotted away, taking with it centuries of visits remembered and forgotten.

If you had come in the front door, you’d have found yourself in a small entryway with a coat closet and a staircase. To your left was the room my parents used as a (very messy) study; I’m not sure how it was originally used. To your right was the parlor, presumably the sitting area where 18th and 19th Century guests were received and scandals were whispered about and consumption played out on the delicate, rosy cheeks of farmers’ daughters.

Or something like that. My mother honored tradition by making this a formal room of sorts. It featured some of the finest relics of her own upbringing: an imposing grandfather clock that had long ago stopped working (although one year at Thanksgiving, my father’s physicist cousin spent the whole time trying to repair it), two wing chairs with a table between them, a floral rug, an upright piano, and a wall (painted Colonial blue) that had a built-in bookcase and a fireplace.

It also featured a conglomeration of two or three shelving units that staggered with the weight of hundreds of records, dozens of cassettes, a silver-fronted, wood-paneled stereo receiver, a record player, a tape player (with auto-reverse!), and eventually a CD player and CDs.

For me, the piano and the stereo were the real draws. Although I don’t think of the parlor as a favorite room, I do know that I spent hours in there torturing the ivories, sifting through records and tapes, and choreographing elaborate dance routines.

This last presented a challenge, as there were one or two places on the soft pine floors that would make the record skip if you stepped on them too heavily. We were forever warning people — guests, friends, babysitters — about this structural flaw. “Careful! You’ll make the record skip!” Boggles the 21st Century mind, doesn’t it.

Anyhow, I heard two songs this morning that put me right back in the parlor. “The One I Love” recalled an awesomely awkward junior-high moment of dancing along to that song on the radio, making up passionate dance moves on the spot. And “Just What I Needed” brought to mind a more sedate moment, in high school or college, when I snuck in to put a Cars cassette on because I knew my visiting future-brother-in-law couldn’t stand the group. Sadly, my hilarious prank went largely unnoticed.

Since I’m rambling, I’ll also add that I discovered this morning that Michael Stipe has described his song as “brutal” and “violent.” Although I was not among the ranks of people who apparently thought it was a sappy love song, I must admit I never thought of it quite that way, either. I might have to rechoreograph my routine.

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