the love that house built

Already it looks like the place where we would grow up. The living room windows from which we would peek are in place and the interior of that large room is open to the weather. It’s empty of the years of memories – the Christmas trees and posed holiday photographs. Not yet visible are the girls putting their first vinyls on the turn table and disco dancing about the room. The curtains mom would pull back to see who was messing around in “the good room” aren’t hanging there, yet. It doesn’t have the red velveteen wall paper, thick carpet or big couch. It’s just gaping space of a newly constructed house. It’s open to the air like a baby’s mouth, begging to be filled with life.

To the right of the hungry living room are the windows to the “family room” which sits over the garage and overlooks the driveway. So I guess such placement would make that the “family window”. That window would frame the dog’s head as he anxiously watched us leave for the day. From there we’d watch for the bus or waive goodbye to guests just leaving. They, in turn, would flip their lights in acknowledgment just before disappearing down the hill. Or, we’d dash to this spot to see if that little noise we heard was our parents pulling in the driveway and interrupting our miscreant adventures.

Last fall I made two visits during which I cleaned and restored the living room to it’s former, dust free, sense of fancy. I helped mom move the TV out (which involved drilling into the drywall, very exciting) and the dining set in. The family room became a grand dinner room. The dining room became a cozy little nest where mom could watch birds while she ate breakfast, watch tv, or snuggle up on the couch.

But I look at this picture of the house, just new on its foundations and sitting atop as yet still exposed cinder blocks and I realize, it won. All those years of comings and goings, of births, fights, moving upstairs to downstairs, cooking of meals or leaving for weeks at a time on holiday and it was there. The blocks and boards played silent witness, framing our experiences, and still stand like conquerors.

The house, too, has a face. The house, too, has a soul that has aged and tempered under snowstorms, basement floods, and various face lifts. It’s the only faithful member of the family, wrapping its beams around my mother and she hobbles about in there by herself.

The house… the house won the love marathon.