The House We Grew Up In

The Bird family home symbolizes the family’s trauma, and its disarray and stifling atmosphere represent the family’s inability to move on from tragedy. Lorelei cultivates this cluttered home environment as a coping mechanism for her childhood trauma, but this environment makes her family members feel trapped, and they long to escape. Lorelei is the only one happy to stay where she is. She can’t understand the appeal of going abroad, and when Colin mentions spending Easter in Greece, it sends her into a spiral of despair. She wants to keep her children trapped in their childhoods, as shown by her insistence on keeping a craft box even though their interests have changed. The house’s claustrophobic aspect is clear in Meg’s descriptions of it: “She saw herself squeezing through smaller and smaller apertures, into deeper and deeper corners of the house until she was squashed into a ball and unable to turn around” (26). In trying to preserve good memories and protect herself, Lorelei inadvertently cut herself off from the rest of the world, an example of how coping mechanisms can backfire and render one more isolated.

Smothered by Lorelei’s attempts to keep them young and close, each Bird child fantasizes about escape. During the first Easter Sunday mentioned in the book, Meg feels too old to sit at the children’s table and too young to be at the adult table. She wants to break through her mother’s attempts at keeping her in a permanent childhood, envisioning it as “a glorious explosion of glass shards, as she slammed her fists through the invisible walls around her. She imagined fresh air and bright light and dizzying amounts of space” (20). When she finally escapes to London, she creates the life she envisions, but it is also a kind of prison. She has to keep her place supremely clean and tidy, meaning it is difficult for her family to relax. Meg’s escape, like Lorelei’s, is ineffectual because she does not address the root of her anxiety; as she connects with her daughter and reconciles with her siblings, she feels more at peace, indicating that community is more healing than escape.

This is reinforced by the other family members as well. When Rory meets Kayleigh, he realizes that he has been “set in aspic” and “pickled in grief” since his brother died (97). Comparing himself to preserved foods, the confines of his mother’s home make him feel less human. When he travels abroad, he is able to go “somewhere that Rhys had never been,” but he finds that he cannot escape “the ghosts” of his trauma. Like Meg, the promise of escape falls short and he is still stuck, leaving Kayleigh and their child because he still feels like he’s 16. Another escape attempt brings him to Thailand, and he turns to Owen as a brother/father figure. However, Owen cannot provide the community and stability that Rory needs, and he betrays him to save himself. Ironically, imprisonment gives Rory the space to examine his emotions and motives; he believes it is retribution for not looking after his brother properly and casting aside Kayleigh and Tia. Being isolated from those he cares about motivates him to seek out his family after he’s released, setting the groundwork for him to reconcile with his siblings and truly begin healing. Similarly, Colin thinks he’ll find himself by escaping Lorelei, but his new life doesn’t truly begin until he connects with Kayleigh and becomes a father to Tia.

Beth is the last to escape from home, and like Rory, it takes another person for this to happen. She refers to Jason as “a life-raft” (220), and he allows her to imagine a different future for herself. In her mother’s house, “[s]he was a prisoner […] entirely of her own making” (220). Without her own identity, she was behaving self-destructively, adopting some of Lorelei’s hoarding habits and sleeping with Meg’s husband. Like her siblings, though, moving to the other side of the world does not bring her the sense of freedom she was searching for. She feels like an actor on a stage; she created a world that wasn’t real, which became like a prison for her.

It is only after Lorelei’s death and clearing out the house’s prison-like environment that the family can come together and be healed by that reunion. Purged of its items and secrets, the ghosts are laid to rest, and the family can start fresh. The family’s transition is represented by Beth, her new baby, and Rory living in the house and making it their own. They have all escaped but now feel free to come and go as they please.