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Marrow
That room had more color than any room since. It wasn’t because of its deep red shag carpet, or the rich conditioned chestnut of its two wide, handmade chairs. It wasn’t the couch printed with busy autumn colors or even dad’s coveted, finger-eating plaid recliner. It was something else entirely.
As if that room were the only place where things were really alive. I suppose, then, that it was quite fittingly referred to as the Living Room when I was growing up—otherwise lovingly nicknamed the
“Family Room.” Family and living were synonymous in those days.
It was in that room where my first memory lived, and in many respects I suppose it still does.
The feel of the coffee table’s smooth wooden surface beneath the pads of my tiny fingers as I pushed off and rose to a stand for the very first time; a memory more crisp and vivid than that of yesterday. My father had built that table with his own two hands. Other than a being a fine piece of functional art, it also served as the site where, three years later, I would lose my two front teeth. I’d grossly misjudged the angle of launch necessary from the edge of the tall-backed couch to attain the book “The Three Billy
Goat’s Gruff,” which sat on that table, calling to me in the middle of the night. Mother, prematurely awakened by my persistent wailing, had scooped me up and scolded me for getting into the jelly again
(as if this were something I had done often). After hopelessly wiping the alleged strawberry jam from my face and fingers with a wet rag, it finally occurred to her. “Oh, there’s no teeth there,” she reported aloud, confirming what I already knew. I was a bit exasperated with her for somehow not sooner translating as much out of my garbled language of tears. “What did you do with your teeth?” By now, she was using that almost cartoony, semi-transparent voice – the one a mother often draws on when attempting to keep her child calm and happy, even as her plainly panicked eyes betray her.
The family room was also the place where my often-wily and always animated big sister, the
“Great Dianey-Banannie”, had held her magic show. Adorned in her tall black construction-paper and scotch-tape top hat, she waved her magic wand and made the baby disappear. Thankfully, she was able to use her vast mystical powers to also make him reappear again. And all the antics and drama were

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caught on film by our creative and loving father using a grainy, though then state-of-the-art, 8mm movie camera. The movie would be watched again and again in the years to follow. It would always begin with joy and laughter, but would inevitably end with a kind of quiet reverence accompanied with the kind of lumps in our throats that were of a size simply not feasible to swallow.
The baby in the video was my little brother, Johnney. The day he came home was one of the best I can remember. Not only did mom once again have a lap big enough for me to sit on, but from the moment he arrived in that white-cardboard gift box, I was mesmerized. Kneeling beside the box, which was encircled with a printed wavy blue pastel ribbon tied into a lavish bow, I peeked over the perforated edge. I was simply unable to peel my gaze from this new and magical being. My baby brother. I loved him at once.
I came upon him one day in the living room, as he lay on his back on a soft white baby blanket edged in creamy satin. His legs hovered just above the blanket, stretching and squirming, figuring out their purpose. He’d created a sticky purple smear on his left cheek as his tongue lolled out of his tiny open mouth, only occasionally making contact with the shiny circle of a grape Life-Saver’s sucker he’d smushed onto his face. My cheeks became suddenly hot. I retraced my steps back to the kitchen counter, where I had placed my sucker earlier. It was gone. I’d been betrayed. I stomped back into the living room. “That’s my sucker!” As I was grappling around, trying to pry it from the tight clenching of
Johnney’s sticky fist, my mother came out and saw what was happening. She knelt down, “Oh, I’m sorry. I gave it to him. It wasn’t his fault. I’ll get you another one, sweetheart.”
“I don’t want another one. I want that one!” I stormed out of the room, without my sucker and without the capacity to either be given that sucker or to receive a new one. Now I was both sticky and fuming. Stubborn and slighted. Clueless about how to even begin to assimilate this new feeling.
A few months later, on one of the first hot days at the onset of summer, my sister had her birthday party. Just outside of the living room, through the wide sliding-glass doors to the raised concrete patio in the backyard, the neighborhood kids and their parents gathered to celebrate. We all

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ran around, playing Duck-Duck-Goose and Pin-the-Tail-on-the-Donkey until the adults called us back up to the patio for birthday cake. I sat at the picnic table with the other kids. Mom busied herself passing out paper plates. Pat Heckert, our friend Monica’s mom, was carrying Johnney, bouncing him up and down in her arms and he cried. As I watched her, my hackles rose. She’s hurting him. I don’t think I ever felt more protective of my little brother than I did as I watched her continue bouncing him. He cried louder, and I felt like someone should do something to stop her. I should have done something to stop her. His tiny face looked yellowish-green. Why hadn’t I stopped her?
Scarcely more than a month later, I sat on the fluff of the red shag carpet, flipping through a coloring book while my mom sat with Johnney on one of the polished walnut chairs. She was on-hold with the hospital, waiting to make another routine appointment for my brother when it happened.
Something gripped me and I saw his tiny head slouch over. That undisguisable panic-- no, it was terror- which overtook my mother’s eyes as she looked down at him, bundled in that soft blanket in her arms.
“Johnney?” She shook him once. “Johnney?” Again. “Oh no Johnney, please no!” Someone was on the line now. I could hear a voice coming through the phone as my mother dropped it, grabbing on to my brother with both hands, now in unabashed hysterics. I could only watch. I did not know what to do. I had never seen my mother break down like this. I didn’t even know that moms could. Everything was changed. Moms couldn’t protect us from everything. I couldn’t protect her either. It’s okay, when
Nannie gets home, she can wave her magic wand and bring the baby back. I’ll give all my purple suckers,
just come back! I’m sorry.
That was the coldest summer that’s ever been.
Along with my baby brother, the Living Room had died.
Mom and dad eventually remodeled the room completely, even ripping up that fluffy red shag carpet. It never quite felt the same. It now had a quaint sort of country charm, and all the furniture matched, but it just never felt vibrant and alive again.

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Coming back to visit years and years later, after fleeing from an abusive boyfriend while he was away at work, I had nothing but a girlfriend’s compact car full of supplies, the clothes on my back, and a very confused crate of cats. I blinked through tearful eyes in the dark. Lying flat-bellied, back again on that floor with my face pressed against the now not-so-new carpet, I stared out the sliding-glass doors at the stars above the back porch. I just needed to get as close as I could to that old and vibrant living room, back to a time when things were safe, as if some part of the real family room were still alive underneath all that carpet, nestled deep within the floorboards where it had been waiting dormant and well-insulated, protected for all these years. If I could just somehow, even for the briefest of moments, tap into that heartwood beneath; to feel the marrow of that room coursing alive through my veins again; to be transfused with innocence once more, revived with the incorruptible blood-sap of youth.
Mom and dad have long since moved out of that place. When I drive past today, it looks so different. Hedges have been chopped down, siding has been painted, old shingles replaced with new.
But the olive tree that mom planted when Johnney died still stands tall, rising now well-above the roofline, living on strong with its own variety of heartwood. The marrow of my memory now the only wand to bring it all back.