I Spy

Many times I have walked through This Old House taking in its many flaws.  The window seat we never varnished, the very boring antique white half-bath on the first floor, the really bad linoleum in the kitchen.  I could go on for hours, giving special credence to the stained and ratty decades-old upstairs Berber so snagged it's become a cat's dreamland.  I remember when we were trying to sell This Old House earlier this year.  I thought nobody would every possibly want a house with no garage, no landscaping to speak of, a Silence of the Lambs basement, small, 80-year-old bedrooms that could never, ever fit a Pottery Barn bedroom set, EVER. 

Tonight I walked through it again thinking how very dry and stocked it seems.  There is so much food in this house.  We could probably not buy anything but produce and milk for a month and be fine.  Yet we went to Costco and bought things like Lysol wipes and laundry detergent and toothpaste.  We bought the little angel a fuzzy pair of pink sweatpants for this winter.  We bought wine.

I sent two big boxes of the little angel's and my clothes down to my cousin in Houston on Tuesday.  She has direct access to the newly homeless through her church, by walking down the street.  They are everywhere.  My beloved and I talked about how people will go on to rebuild their lives from scratch, just like my sister did when the house in which she rented a room in college burned to the ground.  I remember the smell of her photo album.  She clung to it, even though it smelled like shit.  She tried to get the smell out of her teddy bear, the one she'd had since we lived together in my parent's house - Molly.  She walked out of that house with the clothes on her back and a laptop containing her poems.  It took her five years to build back her wardrobe, her books, her reality.  How long does it take to build back an entire life?

I will never again curse the stuck-shut windows, the creaking floorboards, the doors that hang at crazy angles, never to shut properly. The thresholds that defy any modern baby gate, no matter how much money you spend.  Those thresholds house doors that close at night against weather, danger, noise and the troubles of the outside world.  How comforting it is to close those doors and just focus on my own life.

Maybe sometimes it takes a strong wind to knock down the walls we've built.