Pencil Marks on the Door Frame

Lyrics

There's a door frame in the kitchen
With a ladder drawn in lead
Little lines with little dates
And the names of those we've fed
Here's you at four with a toothy grin
Standing tall on tiptoe feet
Here's you at nine, you cheated, love
You stretched up for the sheet

Pencil marks on the door frame
Climbing up the paint
Every year a little higher
Every year the proof of change
I could paint it over, I suppose
When we sell and move away
But I'd take the whole door with me
Just to keep you at this height today

Here's the summer you grew an inch
In the weeks before the fair
Here's the winter that you stalled
And you sulked upon the stair
Your mother wrote the dates in
With her careful looping hand
And now it's mine to run my thumb
Along the lines she planned

Pencil marks on the door frame
Climbing up the paint
Every year a little higher
Every year the proof of change
I could paint it over, I suppose
When we sell and move away
But I'd take the whole door with me
Just to keep you at this height today

Now you're taller than the top mark
You'd need a different wall
And I laugh and I pretend I'm fine
That it's nothing much at all
But the pencil never lies, my dear
It remembers how you stood
Small and sure and full of plans
Doing everything you could

So come on home at Christmas
Stand up straight against the wood
I'll draw the line above your head
Just the way I always would
It won't say anything new, I know
You've stopped now, nearly grown
But I'll write the date beside it
So the frame knows you came home

Pencil marks on the door frame
Climbing up the paint
Every year a little higher
Every year the proof of change
I could paint it over, I suppose
When we sell and move away
But I'd take the whole door with me
Just to keep you at this height today

Just to keep you at this height
Just to keep you here today