sentient marrow

This week’s theme thanks to the theme generator on WordPress.

Italo Calvino said, “The more enlightened our houses are, the more their walls ooze ghosts.” Describe the ghosts that live in your house.

Create art or writing based on the above prompt and post a link, if you so desire.
Here’s my contribution for the week:

The ghosts in my house aren’t only thoughts and memories. Some of them are present in physical matter left behind from years past. Holes in the wall from teenage angst, a last minute carpet bought for the floor that I eventually gave birth to my youngest daughter on, an entryway marking the growth of children over the years.

When I was young, we moved around almost every single year until I was 12. There was no time for physical items to becomes markers of past events. There was no time for bonds to be formed among friends or even family outside my primary unit. No ghosts in those houses and apartments at all. The place that held ghosts for me at that stage of life was my mother’s car. Many road trips and moves were spent in her car where each of the three of us had our designated living area… mine was the back window. I laid against the cold of the back window watching other cars drive by and that was my place. Even though we stopped moving after I turned 12 and my Mom remarried, it took me years to feel at home anywhere other than a car. When I turned 15, my Mom wanted to move again, I told her no. I told her she could move without me, but that I was not moving again. And, truly, I haven’t. I may have lived in a couple different apartments before buying the house we have lived in for 12 years, but they have all been within about an hour of each other. Now, I have a home, ghosts and all.