In the chapter "Tonight We Improvise" Benji comments on the unreliability of memory. In particular, Benji walks through his old house with Melanie while reminiscing about his time there. Benji says, WLNG made Benji reminisce about a particular memory where everyone in his family was happy and together. Elena was home, Benji and Reggie were still a unit, his mother seemed young, his father was barbecuing, and barbecue was still the best thing in the world. Everything was perfect except the fact that the memory might have been fabricated and never have existed in the first place. Something about this chapter reminded me of Housekeeping (possibly it was Benji's musings about the unreliability of memory or it might have been Benji's experience revisiting a house that's no longer his).
I was amazed at how Benji seemed to remember little details from his home and the stories behind them from the creaks the house made to the horse shoe crab nailed on the wall. I was especially amazed since I've never moved but I don't think I could describe the house I lived in all my life the same way Benji did. It's not that I don't have any childhood memories associated with my home like Benji, it's because those memories aren't on the forefront of my mind. I think part of the reason I don't view my own home with the same mindset as Benji is because I still live there. For me, my home is an object that exists firmly in the present and not the past. Benji also didn't quite described the beach house he currently lives in quite the same detail as his childhood home even though I'm pretty sure he also has memories associated with that house.
Benji's reminisces on his childhood home reminded me of Ruth's thoughts on memory and loss. I remember Ruth commenting on how her memory of her mom was shaped by the fact that her mom left her. Ruth muses on how, "Memory is the sense of loss, and loss pulls us after it, " (194). Memory and loss are entangled and consequently, once you've lost something your memories of that thing become more potent. Ruth mentions how because her mother left her, Ruth's memory of her mother became transfigured. Ruth vividly remembers her mother buying Lucille and her ice cream and how quiet and calm her mother seemed. However Ruth says, "if she had simply brought us home again to the high frame apartment building with the scaffolding of stairs, I would not remember her that way," (197). If Ruth's mother had stayed she would have seemed permanent and thus have seemed like a different person in Ruth's memory. Similarly, because Benji's stay in his old house was temporary, his experiences at that house are transfigured. For Benji now, that house symbolizes his childhood when his family was still together. It's because Benji's time at Sag Harbor is temporary, that Ben remembers Sag Harbor so well and can describe the effects of that time on him.
I feel like it would be wrong to write about Housekeeping, without addressing the matter of houses, especially since this chapter talks about a house that Benji did not keep. Houses are also symbols of permanence. However moving to a new home disrupts that illusion of permanence. Therefore, when Benji sees his own home, he's reminded of time's passage. This time Elena, Reggie, and his parents aren't in the house with him. Instead, someone new lives there and Benji is sneaking in with Melanie. Even if the house is physically the same, Benji has changed. This effect heightens Benji's feelings of nostalgia.
