Mark KennedyView other columns by Mark Kennedy
When I go into one of our sons' bedrooms, it feels like I'm entering a mini museum.
Each boy's room contains a gallery of childhood artifacts - sports trophies, posters, vacation souvenirs, overstuffed bookcases.
I'm struck by how the contents of each bedroom mirror the passage of time. Not much gets thrown away in a boy's room. Things just get moved around or repurposed.
Thus, a Ping-Pong table that took Santa and two elves all night to assemble has been turned into a workbench where my 14-year-old son assembles Airsoft rifles.
Meanwhile, in my 9-year-old son's bedroom, a shin-high table that used to hold the track for a Thomas the Tank Engine train set is now a storage shelf for board games and Nerf guns.
Then there are the wall murals my wife painted in each boy's room. These images will be the hardest to paper over if, or when, the time comes.
In our older son's bedroom, there's a giant rendering of Turner Field in Atlanta painted by my wife when our firstborn was a sweet-swinging Little Leaguer who idolized Chipper Jones. Over in my younger son's bedroom, my wife painted a quote from poet Shel Silverstein that reads, in part:
"If you are a dreamer come in
For we have some flax golden tales to spin
Come in!
Come in!"
If I squint and concentrate, I can envision a future - maybe 10 years from now - when these bedrooms become three-dimensional scrapbooks beckoning me to Come in! Come in!
As long as my mind remains durable, there will be memory triggers in every direction. In my older son's room, for example:
The worn varnish on his headboard where, as a toddler, he parked his juice cup at bedtime will remind me of our nighttime storytelling ritual. The framed Presidential Fitness Award that he earned in elementary school after finally completing an excruciating set of chin-ups will remind me of his deep reserve of willpower.
Meanwhile, a crate filled with soccer medals that he took off the walls and set outside his bedroom door one night after a disappointing game will remind me of the fleeting glories of childhood sports.
In my younger son's room:
Needles in the carpet from artificial Christmas trees will remind me of his endearing insistence on decorating his room for the holidays. The "Fox in Socks" book in his bookcase will remind me of his squeals of laughter when Daddy would get tongue-tied reading lines like: "Whose socks? Sue's socks." The crates of hand-me-down clothes in his closet will remind me of his sweet nature and the charmingly modest expectations of a second-born child.
If you can't tell, I'm cursed with sentimentality, which I define as an obsessive need to pin a happy ending on everything. For the long run, I'd do well to paint another Shel Silverstein verse over my own bed:
"There are no happy endings.
Endings are the saddest part,
So just give me a happy middle
And a very happy start."
Contact Mark Kennedy at mkennedy@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6645. Follow him on Twitter @TFPCOLUMNIST. Subscribe to his Facebook updates at www.facebook.com/mkennedycolumnist.