April 20, 2012
-
It’s Just A House
Just A House?Many of us have lived in a varied assortment of houses, that we have called home. For some, it may have been a dump and then for others a mansion. In my youth, our house was neither of these. Our house was simply home and had nothing to do with elegance or hardship.
Our house had grown with the generations that had inhabited it. The sounds of it’s creaks, strains and mysterious thumps, told us it lived and the sigh of a fresh breeze coming through an open window at night, was it’s breath. Our house kept us warm and safe and embraced us with contentment.
Our house was also stylish and dressed with the seasons and holidays. It surrounded itself with it’s best colors during the fall and it’s walls radiated from the bright glow of it’s fireplace. Then finally, it was adorned in it’s most festive attire for Christmas. The hanging of rich garlands and twinkle lights from every space gave radiance to even the darkest corner. Finally, in the heart of the house, was the majestic evergreen symbolizing life, hope and a new bicycle.
Then the annual banquets of flavors and aromas rising from it’s Thanksgiving kitchen, 4th of July barbeques and of course, Sunday dinners. The aroma of bacon, waffling through the house on a Saturday morning and the smell of Mom’s famous pot roast in the evening. Our house was a daily celebration of culinary love and sharing.
Time is more fragile than memories and as such, changes. The paint will peel and the plumbing will weaken. The roof has done it’s best and the electrical nerves of the structure begin to fray. The house I grew up in has been abandoned for years now and after an absence of many decades, I once again find myself standing on the front curb staring at a weathered and stained front door. I stand there waiting for Dad to come out and pitch with me before supper, or maybe I hear my dog scratching to get out to come run with me. Memories now held in trust within those failing walls. Is it just a house? My tears tell me no.
Comments (3)
It may just be a house to some but they don’t realize that the structure houses home. Beautifully said.
House is just a house, but it is the love and memories that make it a home.
No not just a house but a beautiful memory that held the love and caring of past years living inside those walls.
I have seen so many buildings here where I live fall on hard times, and they now sit boarded up from businesses that could not survive the sad economic. I know it is silly but they have been here all of my life and I have played in the ymca and the swimming pool, and gone to dentists and drs in the others. I have shopped for clothes and baby clothes in buildings that now sit boarded up. I have a saddness seeing it allc hange and die.Never just a house but a wonderful memory.