The house on Gravenstein

The old farmhouse on Gravenstein highway settles deeper into the earth. And here we are, in the midst of a housing shortage. I would dearly love to rescue it from oblivion. Salvage its bones. Lately vandals have come to release the windows from their prison. Shards of glass, forgotten beaches, the porch sags, the roof follows suit, the shingles are learning to fly. I remember once, a long time ago the father who spray-painted on the side of the house, I love you kids! Love, Dad. His visible anguish haunted me. And I can’t help but think of the woman who left so abruptly, perhaps in the middle of the night from that failed marriage, with her children in tow. What atrocity was the final straw? His visible anguish there for the commuters to see, haunted me for years. And the father, his heart broken over the loss of his children, reflected here in the house falling to rack and ruin, slowly through the ages. And I think of those children, most likely now with children of their own, did they carry the grief into the next generation, raising children who could never forgive their father, or themselves? The house becomes a metaphor for a failed marriage from so long ago. Windows, broken eyes that can’t see, the heart of the house exposed to the elements. When you let go. Soon the rains will come and seek the lowest common denominator—the floor and the basement—turning that house back into slurry and loam, a harvest of time. How easy it is to forget that marriage needs tending just like the garden, and the house.