When I am sitting out in the carport smoking cigarettes my mind wanders as it often does & many times my thoughts are on our home...The one pictured that we closed on, May 8th of this year. This is a photo of it around the time of purchase & alot of work has been done to the yard since then. I think it was on the market for a little over a year. There was something about it that intrigued me.
What's not shown in the picture would be to the right, across the street, a home whose owner has recently passed away & the subject of my thoughts tonight.
When we moved in during the month of May, someone was still living there...The yard was maintained, the sprinklers ran every day & the grass was green & pretty, people would sit out on their screened in little porch & the wind chimes would tinkle. We were caught up in our own move-in world & I don't know the whole story but the owner passed away & relatives began to sporadically come down from South Carolina to deal with the estate.
It was nice to listen to them out on the porch after periods of silence & eventually as the weeks passed, they cleared out the house little by little, taking stuff away. That's when I began to notice the weathervane noise. It never did this before but during that time it was making this crying noise as it rotated on an unoiled pivot & I thought "What a lonely sound, it's as if the house knows the emptiness that will come & is finding a way to express the sadness over the departed owner"
The garage sale came & went, we got a good rocking chair for our smoking sessions out on the carport, among other little things, & people came & went for awhile but for the most part the house across the street on the corner stands dark & we are wondering when the realtors sign will appear.
The yard isn't what it was when we first moved in. The sprinklers no longer run to make the grass green during this unusually dry summer & brown neglected patches are showing...They have a huge ugly cactus in the yard which is shedding alot of it's "leaves" all over the grass & the weathervane doesn't trouble itself to cry out it's lonliness much anymore, it's as if the house has accepted it's fate. The realtors sign will go up & the parade will begin it's picking apart of the home's errors & faults which will increase as the home stands empty & neglected for longer periods of time. I'm already witnessing the gradual downward spiral & it saddens me.
Why?
I believe that there is a psychic connection betweeen people & the homes that they live in. There is lonliness & neglect & there is care & love that are manifested between the two. One example being the home across the street, another being ours. One can almost feel the sadness that emanates from a run down rental home versus one with proud owners who always work to improve the place.
Ours was also owned by old people & was not "updated" by today's standards & sat empty & neglected for a long time before we got it. The house itself is still in good shape but God forbid anyone can appreciate old tile being clean & in good condition, being that it's not new & updated by HGTV's standards. I want to re-do the place in respects to it's original character...It was a one owner home. And there is no hurry, I quite like alot of it's old funkiness from the old tile to the outdated wall oven that works wonderfully, to the cabinets that will last several more years with good care & the groovy light fixture balls in the sunroom & unique bathroom light fixture that another more spoiled woman might cringe at, this is our home & I don't mind mixing it's past heritage with our own..
Many times as I sit out there in the carport with a cigarette I like to just let the house "talk" to me about the right thing to do & I don't mind listening.