A post by Chhavi Jangid

Somewhere in most houses there is a doorframe with pencil marks on it.

A name, a date, a line drawn with a book held flat on a child's head. Then another one a year later, higher up.

Nobody thought of it as record keeping. It was a game on an ordinary afternoon, and then everyone went back to what they were doing.

But it is one of the few honest measures a family keeps. Not of achievement. Of time passing in a house where people were present enough to notice.

Houses get painted. Walls come down. The marks usually go without anyone deciding that they should.

What is the one thing in your family home that quietly kept count of the years?