Just a House

If such a thing is possible, I knew every corner and cranny in that house. Big rooms, and small rooms stuck on off of bigger rooms; an upstairs deck—of all things (the 1940s)—which was a sometime retreat for me, where I could look out to the ocean or across all the rooftops of the neighborhood; floors that sloped, and hiding places for stuff I didn’t want my mother to know I had, like a pack of cigarettes, among other things, Parliaments. I don’t think they make those any more. I didn’t smoke them, don’t even remember how I got them. One day I flushed them all down the toilet.

But the house, 609 Ashland Avenue: set up on a hill, palm tree in the front yard, noticeable. It’s the house where I grew up, and it is dear in my memory. My parents often talked about moving while we lived there—the house was big and old with nothing modern and work-saving about it. But we kids wouldn’t hear of moving. We had our friends, you know, and our schools, and we were—or I was—probably afraid of change. Besides, we loved the old house. So they waited until we were all gone, sold it, and moved away.

My heart broke a little then and as I watched its decline. I guess I was the only one who lived nearby. The roof deteriorated and never saw repair. The yard wasn’t kept up. The flower garden my mother took great pride in with her gladiolus and roses, the fruit trees and strawberry plants my dad saw to—all were neglected and fell to ruin. Eventually the owner tore the place down and built an apartment house, ugly faux Spanish, quite out of place in that somewhat Victorian neighborhood.

I thought about that house yesterday as I drove by 722 No Georgia, the house my children grew up in and loved. They still write emails about it to one another, describing its corners and crannies, reaffirming their sense of it as the “best house possible” for growing up.

Yesterday I could see that it is not looking good. A huge travel trailer sits in the front yard, on the property line next to Nickels’ place, and in front of the trailer a wreck of a car, 1956 Pontiac, with a hand-written for sale sign taped to the windshield. On the other side of the house, just beyond the garage wall, where the iris used to grow, there is nothing but junk and at least four garbage cans, not all upright. The pasture was sold off a few years ago, and now a wood fence separates the two properties that had been one. Now, what was pasture bears a tall house and a barn-like building which no doubt block the view from the big picture windows in the living room at 722. I drove around the back and couldn’t see our house through the new house and barn.

But that’s the thing. It is no longer our house, and so what has become of it is no longer our business and should not concern me. It’s not as if we can, any of us, go back. That is not how this life works. Besides, I don’t know but what the present occupants are building memories in 722 No Georgia as dear as ours, though I doubt it.

I think there is such a thing as ownership that goes beyond actual ownership. The place will always be ours in that sense, and that is why I feel such disappointment about it, as I did about 609. It ought to be dear to anyone living there. It ought to be cared for. How dare they let it go? But, you say, it’s just a house, a place. Okay, I say, and thank goodness we had it, but clearly it is more than just a place to our family. Thank goodness, again, that what we did there and what we learned there we can always keep, wherever we are.