These Let Him Find
By Rose Thomas Graham
When he comes back, he will not be the same,
A little more the man, and less the boy.
Greet him as from a winning baseball game
With laughter in your eyes, hearts full of joy.
And let him find in Dad his boyhood chum,
Mom’s hair uncurled, if last he saw it plain.
All through the house a gentle lilting hum
Like cooing doves in sunshine after rain.
In his own bedroom, please, but little change,
The well-remembered pictures on the wall;
The fragrance of baked apples near the range,
And Sis’s blue umbrella in the hall.
Call in his pals to sing and laugh and play,
As though he said, “Hello” but yesterday.
(1955)
I’m confused. It’s 1955. Where did he go? And why can’t Mom change her hairstyle or Sis move her umbrella?
My sister took over my bedroom six weeks BEFORE I left for college. When I came home, I was a visitor who slept on the couch. I don’t understand preserving children’s spaces once they leave.
I suspect this was written for a son coming back from military service, or perhaps a 2-1/2 year overseas mission, so one who had been absent for a long time and who would be reassured by the routine things of home the way he remembered it. I get the sense that his absence was not for his own benefit but through the call of duty, and that in some ways he would need to put that absence behind him.
I can’t point to anything specific that suggests that to me, except that, like you, it just doesn’t fit if he was merely away at school for a semester or otherwise in control of his own life, so I’m trying to find other scenarios that would account for a boy “not being the same” and looking for homely memories.