We plan to leave this house in 7 months or so. We've been here going on 9 years; this is the longest I've lived anywhere since I was a kid. This little, grey house on the corner, built in 1938, is not without it's charm...hardwoods, nooks, built-in shelves, scalloped wood detailing, and trees outside that grow lush for summertime. When it's windy and warm, the song of their sway goes deep into your lungs and breaths for you, if you let it. In the Fall, you have all pecans you need for Thanksgiving, all the time giving. The front door faces north, so when a cold front rolls through, the wind pushes our old door in, and the windchime, typically lazy, becomes frantic and loud. This is how I know to reach for a warmer jacket. What she lacks are washer/dryer connections, and I'm officially over the laundromat, truth be told. She lacks modern heat and air. The summer is dreadful, but the watermelon you cut up and eat on the front porch is all the more sweet and satisfying. The winter is bone cold! But I love the sound of the space heater at night, glowing red and purring as we sleep, covered in heavy, soft blankets, we listen as the wind and freezing rain howls and knocks at our rickety windows. If she were human, she'd be an old lady, and in what has been nearly a decade, she's watched me turn into one, myself.
the link between sanity and insanity is but a snap: almost like a twig beneath your shoe in november and what happens when you can't leave your home because your anger and fear keep you prisoner, and all you want to do is be loved and be good at loving and quit hating everything including the cheap folgers coffee when you really wanted the good stuff from central market or why you can't reach your mother anymore because her pain is rearing it's ugly head over the phone and your siblings don't have much to do with you anymore, why? who really knows, maybe it's because you are becoming the one thing they hate the most but you don't know what that is and in two months you'll be 36 and you still do not have children and you are in financial ruin and you don't have the one thing you really want which is that front porch swing, but first you have to have the front porch. anyway. right?
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