Taking Census

Above my house are the West Hills of Portland, a tumbling jumble of streets and homes defying gravity, symmetry, and social classification. One thing is certain: those who live in these homes will all someday die.

I thought about that yesterday as I knocked on a string of houses that turned out to be vacant. They were filled with things and memories, but the residents had all moved out one, three or five years ago and been placed in nursing homes, their houses remaining empty until their owners die and someone holds an estate sale to sell off all their unclaimed treasures, the cash being more desirable than the goods to whoever can lay claim to the remains.

We've been to numerous estate sales in these hills, my wife and I. Crowds line up for the 9 AM opening and enter a few at a time to peruse, select and cart off whatever seems of value. If you wait till the second day, the selection is much slimmer, but the prices are cut by half.

Many of these neighborhoods were built in the late 50s through late 70s and the original buyers have never moved on. Until now, when death comes knocking at the door. And so, ever slowly and surely, the ownership of these houses has been turning over as the old generation passes and strangers move in to stake their claim.

As an official U.S. Census Enumerator, I am sworn to confidentiality over the information I gather – names, genders, ages, and ethnicity – said data having a 72-year hold before being released. Someday some odd descendent will scour the records for the facts of their long-forgotten great-grandparent, but until then only a corporate image of the area will be revealed. Demographically the West Hills are white, with a high percentage of elderly, interspersed with young families and middling singles, all of whom appear stereotypical, but must surely each be harboring unique and fascinating tales of life.

A few warmly invite me in for tea or offer me something to eat. Occasionally someone, generally age 80 or older, wants me to linger long and talk – or just listen. Most have a formally polite, business-like, get-it-over approach to the census, aware that the Founding Fathers mandated the enumeration so that our nation could function as a representative democracy. Then there are a few who seem keen on exercising their Second Amendment rights and, with real or imaginary weapon, chase me off of their tiny kingdom, intent to remain anonymous to the world beyond.

But even with these, there are generally ways to get at the rudiments of information. Neighbors who care about their neighborhoods and those who live in them. Real estate offices. Apartment complex managers. The nosy neighbors remind me of the little old ladies in China with the official red armbands, a political token identifying a cultural tradition of maternal care far more ancient than the political system itself. The managers, I sometimes have to remind them, are under law to help me in my mission of enumerating the people of the land.

In all this sleuthing, there is a consistent pattern of humanity as steady as the rain on my window this afternoon. People are born, they live, and they die. When our kids were younger, my wife and I used to take turns reading a story to them at bedtime. Sometimes, when they were extra tired or time was especially pressing, and it was my turn, I'd give them my classic three-liner of a story:

"He was born.

"He lived.

"He died."

I don't know why it was always a "he", except that perhaps the male pronoun shortened the story by three characters. The kids learned to anticipate that tale and came to understand that in these seven words was the briefest essence of life. We are born. We live. We die.

I've had this fantasy of an idea for some time now, that I could accumulate some wealth of my own and buy one of the old estates in the area, fix it up and turn it into a museum. I'd preserve the ancient trees on the tract, cultivate a diversity of flowers and fauna, and fashion benches and chairs of wood and stone. And, permit willing, I'd turn the place into a land where the poor masses who live in the valley below could bring the ashes of their departed loved ones and spread them under their favorite shrub or flower, a place to come and linger, treasuring the only thing that carries beyond the grave – memories of a life worthily lived, or not.

In the jumble of miniature kingdoms known as Portland's West Hills, mansions rise next to crumbling cottages and vie for million dollar views with gravity-defying stilted palaces. Elderly widows land-rich and cash-poor live next to young professionals debt-rich and sense-poor and share the same street with aging managers cash-rich and relationally-poor. They are Jewish and Gentile, wealthy and broke, educated and ignorant, sophisticated and common. But they are one and all headed for the grave. And their Maker, acknowledged nor not.

And to the grave, they will take nothing, absolutely nothing that can be sold in those estate sales. They spend their whole lives amassing things to separate them from their neighbors and in the end they are no different than anyone else. They cannot stop the tide of life.

These thoughts that follow me as I knock on yet another door are not depressing. They are simply a meditation, a reminder that we are not the sum of our possessions, but we are the sum of what treasures we manage to store up in heaven, where moth and rust cannot corrupt and thieves cannot break in and steal.