My Father's House
My father built the house I grew up in. He designed it himself, and he built it with his bare hands. He had help, of course, but only two men, Herman and Louie, men with names, who worked side by side with my father as they built that house up around us. We lived in it even as they worked. They knew us, we knew them, and we all came to know the house as it grew up, so to speak, along with us.
Someone else owns my father’s house now. I met him once. He seemed nice enough, but he does not love that house as I do. He is, as they say in suburbia, “remodeling.”
He has plans to gut my beloved home – the home I grew up in, the home that grew up with me. He did not create the design. He paid someone else to do it. He knows the names on the architectural letterhead, but he does not know the individual men and women who committed his dreams to paper. Anonymous help can be paid for in cash.
Nor will he build the house himself. He will pay someone else to do that too, and he will live somewhere else while the work is done. He will know the names on the construction company’s letterhead, but he will not know the names of any of the men swinging hammers. In cavernous spaces their breath will mingle with my father's, but their efforts will be forgotten.
When the work is finished, he will move into his new home. If he pays enough for the job, it will be just the way he imagined it. The name on the title will still be his, as it is now. But he will never own that house the way I own that house. My father’s blood to my blood, his sweat to my sweat, I lived once in my father’s house.
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I Lived Once in My Father's House:
Comments (2)
Wow - that is a powerful story. As you know, I'm a visual person, and I can envision what it must have been like to see the house become real as your dad, Herman, and Louie worked. The sound of hammering, the smell of sawdust, and the wonder of it all coming together to become something that wasn't there before. Home.
I can't wait for parts 2 and 3!
Posted by Dwayne Melancon | November 30, 2005 11:08 AM
Posted on November 30, 2005 11:08
It was a wonderful journey. My father has taught me a lot about our power to create the world around us.
I visited the house during the earliest stages of the remodeling. The facade hadn't changed, but the inside was just a shadow of the home I remembered. Walls had been ripped apart and torn down, floors and stairways were bare, and most of what remained was raw framing. But from the framework alone I could see the whole house, alive in my memory - the kitchen where my mother spent so much time, the living room with its expansive view of the river, the apartment downstairs where my grandparents lived.
Change is the nature of the universe. But no change can entirely erase the vibrant memories of home.
Posted by EM Sky | November 30, 2005 4:37 PM
Posted on November 30, 2005 16:37