Houses are like real people
When is a house not a house?
When it’s a home.
The four-walled, roofed structure ceases to be just a piece of construction with human inhabitants when it begins to reflect the personalities of its owners.
Perhaps because of some psychological need or other, many of us have what is called a strong nesting instinct. We are happiest when we are making our homes comfortable to us and our families and we strive to make every place we live in fit our mental picture of “home.” Time doesn’t necessarily diminish our affection for, or memory of, homes we’ve known.
In a quiet moment, or when something jars my memory just right, I can still visualize the interior of my grandparents’ home in northwestern Pennsylvania where I lived from age two to age 6. Every piece of furniture, even the telephone number, is as vivid in my mind as if it were yesterday.
My older daughter is the same way about her grandparents’ home. Many of her happiest childhood memories are situated there, so much so that she often remarked to my stepfather that she wanted to buy his house someday and live in it forever.
Someone else owns the house now, and has made substantial changes in the exterior. When last my daughter drove by her dream home, she came away disappointed and saddened. Her mental picture of the place she loved is still intact. Only the reality has changed.
Just yesterday, I was told that my aunt will soon be selling her home. It sounds like an ordinary event … happens every day, as a matter of fact.
But in this case, only close family members will understand what this particular sale will mean.
My aunt Mary is a nester personified. She has spent her entire adult life in her home. Her curtains, chairs, wall coverings, furniture arrangement, decoration … all of it reflects the taste of her and her husband Matt. Uncle Matt died a couple of years ago and the home, emptied of its life, what with the kids grown and gone, stayed just the way it had always been, just very quiet and very lonely.
Then Aunt Mary took sick, moved to central Jersey to stay with her daughter for a while and closed the house.
The house had an occasional visit from one of the children … just long enough to collect some necessary papers or adjust a thermostat … but it stayed closed up and forbidding for over a year.
Last week, Aunt Mary felt well enough to go come. Home to what she had nurtured and cared for sine her daughter was a baby. Home to the familiar sights and smells of her kitchen and her living room. She was confident she could handle it.
It lasted only a few days. Whether because the house had been closed for so long and lacked fresh, healthful air, or for some other reason, her illness returned and she ended up back up north … but this time with a difference.
She’s decided to sell the house.
Now, it’s just a house. It didn’t have a welcoming feeling when she walked back in. There was no excitement about living in it again. It was like a stranger after all those days and months and she wasn’t physically strong enough to renew the acquaintance and rekindle the old flame.
No doubt the little ranch house will become “home” to its new owners. It will have a different décor inside and probably some cosmetic changes on the outside.
It will not be the same in reality as it was during all those years she, her children and her husband lived in it, but it will always be her home in her mind.
Houses … homes… have ghosts of their own.
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