the garage

I walked past an open garage the other day. It was neat and organized. A young couple live in that house. They have no children. It reminded me of a garage my wife and I once had. There were tools neatly arranged on a workbench. The young lady’s white figure skates hung from a nail. Lawn care implements were displayed on the wall. The unmistakable accessories of his golf game were arranged for easy access. In this garage was a snapshot of the two young lives that had established this home and built themselves into it. Things were in easy reach. Things were organized. Life was under control.

The days of this garage were numbered. A new young life was coming to this house, and it was coming to this garage. I looked down the street to my own garage, and then returned my eyes to this open door revealing the life of my young friends. As I lingered, like phantoms, I began to visualize this view a year hence, then two, then…. I saw dust on figure skates. I saw tools pushed aside to make room for the assembly of scooters and wagons. Spider webs adorned the golf clubs. Yard care tools were pushed behind sleds and roller skates. I could faintly see the shadow of a tricycle—or was it a girl’s bike—partly blocking the door, never parked quite where it was supposed to be. If I squinted, I could make out colored chalk marking out a map to joy on the driveway— hopscotch and ever-larger silhouettes of a young body laying still for mom and dad to trace its outline. Where was the neatness? Where was the organization? Where was the peacefulness of the garage of the present in my glimpse across the years? Where was the silence among the future echoes I was hearing?

As I looked, I saw and heard that only too soon the echoes of a girl’s voice would return to the past and golf clubs and ladies skates and lawn care tools would return to prominence and easy reach—timidly at first, but then forcefully leaving dust on sleds and wagons. It is a timeless and relentless cycle known with special intimacy by the eyes and ears of the garage.


11.2000