A wall of height marks in a doorway is a family’s real history. Nobody paints over it on purpose.

Families keep official records and accidental ones, and the accidental ones tend to be truer. Pencil lines in a doorframe took thirty seconds each, and together they hold a decade: who grew fast, who stalled for a year, dates nobody would otherwise be able to name. That is why people repainting an entire house still work around them.

If your house has something like that, photograph it this week, since houses change hands. If it does not, start one and put dates on it. Small physical records are easy to make and impossible to reconstruct later.