(Photo by Robert C Cleveland in 'The Architectural Digest', Spring 1962) (Needless to say, somebody else's family home)
On bleaker mornings like this morning, when the spectre of Monday creeps up, Nosferatu-like, earlier than it has any right to, I lie in bed wide awake (while Dear Patient M, unsuspecting, snores gently beside me), conducting a virtual tour of the house I did most of my growing up in. I approach the house, as it was, a rambling, run-down bungalow on a busy road, like a mist, seeping under the door, and then I swoop, twisting and laughing and spying through every room. It is, indeed, my "happy place".
I am the only one of my immediate family left in Adelaide. The rest have all fled to sunnier or loftier climes. That house is the one tangible reminder that we ever lived together at all. Sometimes I wonder if I dreamed the whole thing. I miss them all terribly. I am not sure if they know that because I cannot bring myself to let on in front of them. My schtick is to pretend to be wounded that they forsook me.
My parents never owned a house when I was growing up. My father was a Man of the Cloth and we lived wherever The Church would put us up. In this instance, we were accommodated beyond our means in a neighbourhood we would never been able to afford to live in otherwise, and which I could not afford to live in now. We were very lucky, I guess, that The Church was very shrewd when it came to buying and selling property. I am sure that they made a killing when they booted us out of this house after about 11 years. I remember visiting other Pastor's families in similar settings - ensconced (with their crappy old furniture, their frumpy make-do clothing, their potplants grown from cuttings) in drafty unrenovated Manses in nice leafy suburbs.
The neighbours were unlike the Church people that we exclusively associated with up until that point. One one side, there was an English family, who seemed quite posh. If the father was not a professor of some sort, he certainly seemed like one. He had a kindly face, and spent a lot of time pottering quietly in his unruly garden. We called him Puddleglum. The mother was friendly, gossipy and loud, had grey wiry hair, smoked Woodbines in the house and would blithely chat to my bemused mother about things like The Family Silver, not thinking for one minute that Mum might not have any Family Silver of her own. On reflection, I think the English Mother was probably bored out of her brain. On the other side was a more glamorous couple in a more 'modern' house who were rumoured by the English Mother to have made 'millions' in their furniture business. Awful child that I was, I started a baseless rumour that the Furniture Father was a transvestite. Fortunately for everybody, 'The Children's Hour' did not ensue. The house was bought as a deceased estate from an elderly lady called Mrs Holmes. Her presence subsisted. I am not just talking about the soiled pair of cotton tails that my sister and I found stashed in a cupboard. I am not talking about a ghost (although there was one bedroom that always spooked me). No, despite Dad's knee-jerk protestations, Mum had the foresight to buy the entire contents of the house for a few hundred dollars. In the late 70s, the original early-to-mid-20th-century furniture seemed heavy, dull and unfashionable. There was the original grey floral carpet, grey linoleum in the kitchen, crazy paving out the back. Everything was tatty and there was a distinct dearth of anything resembling a mod con (it explains alot about the Adult Me).And everything was filthy. There was also crockery, cutlery, and a multitude of vases. I do not think that any of it was made after the 1950s. It was almost as if Mrs Holmes had not changed anything, Miss Haversham-like, since her wedding day.
Of course, I would give my right eye for most of that stuff now. But apart from the odd item which has been transposed to Queensland with my parents (where, to be frank, it makes little sense), it is all since long gone.
The memory I most cherish about that house is not a specific memory at all. Rather, it is a memory of that sense of the house being full. Of us kids, off in our own worlds, doing our own thing. Sleeping. Fighting. Trying to lose weight. Smoking. Dripping candle wax in elaborate patterns. All of that lying on the floor with oversized headphones on. I also remember my parents, probably looking for a corner of respite, from us kids and each other. But all of us doing whatever we were doing under one roof together. I miss that.
I have often thought about wheedling my way into the house for one last time. I continue to stalk it in the real estate pages, but it never comes up. When feeling particularly anxious or blue, I have driven to the neighbourhood, parked around the corner, and walked past, darting furtive and bashful looks in the general direction. In fact, I did it today. It works like a charm. It grounds me.
But I never linger. I cannot even bring myself to begin to let on.
What a lovely piece! Having only lived a few years here, a few years there, I don't have a house that holds me that way. My longing and my sense of place are a vague, free-floating yearning for sun, for sky, for heat, lizards on the wall. But I do know what you mean about missing the sense of them, the family, all around me. I miss them still and, as much as they annoy me, I would like nothing better than to have them all live on my street to bicker with in that comfortable way that only people who love each other unconditionally can do.
Posted by: Elizabeth | July 15, 2009 at 02:19 PM
Ah! Got to love those lizards on the wall! :) I sometimes wish that I was less sedentary, and was more free-floating in my yearnings! I think the rest of my family have been more adventurous and gypsyish - even my parents upped sticks and retired to a completely different state. Make that "State"...
Posted by: a thousand shades of twilight | July 15, 2009 at 09:08 PM