O
n our way home from Boston, we stopped by the house my family used to own in Southern New Hampshire. It was an incredibly special place to me as a child, and I was hoping to ask the current owners if we could walk around a little and reminisce. When we pulled up, the house was in a pretty obvious state of disrepair, though the two vehicles parked in the driveway looked relatively new. Grass and weeds were more than knee high out back, the paint was peeling, the paths were all overgrown. I knocked on the door, and a gruff older man answered with a pair of loudly barking dogs. He asked that I not walk on his property, and clearly wanted me to leave as quickly as possible.
That house and land gave so, so many people joy in my youth, and I had hoped that whoever was there was half as in love with it as we were. But it doesn't look like a place of life anymore -- it looks like a place to go and hole up and die. There's a No Trespassing sign across the path that leads down to the pond across the road from the house. The whole place looks like the sort of house kids dare each other to run up and touch, before the ghosts prick their ears, or the owners grab shotguns. It's startling the way a spirit of a house can change like that. It's not like it looks all that different from what I remember. In fact, the crazy thing is just how little effort has been put into the place; no little modifications or cleanup, other than a chainlink fence cutting the yard rudely apart to keep the dogs in. It has simply sunk, even now probably not irreparably, but it's extremely sad to see.
I'm reminded of a Tom Waits song, "The House Where Nobody Lives". Somebody lives in this one, but at least from the outside, they don't seem to be living particularly well there. The goodness in this world takes a lot of effort to maintain. That's what life does -- it conserves, fights, keeps its head above the water, and can bring other things around it to life as well. Unfortunately, the most wonderful place of my childhood is dying. That, too, is life.