Tuesday, October 16, 2012

The House That Was My Home

It was the fire that made me realize the house was no longer my home.

I was thirteen in 1996 when my parents gave us the news. We were leaving Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where my family had lived for nearly four generations, and moving to Jacksonville, Florida. Our family business had been merged with another, larger, business and the casualty was life as I knew it. As I had always known it.

For fourteen years I lived in Jacksonville. I worked there, and went to school there, and tried to build a life there, but I never liked it.

Except for our house. I loved our house.

It stood at the end of a long driveway, not even visible from the street. It was two stories of pink brick, and sat on the bank of a large river that snaked its way through the city. When the enormity of my new life was too much to bear, I took myself to the backyard and to the end of the long dock that stretched out into the river, and I would rock on a wooden swing and stare out at a horizon lit by the wild pinks and reds of sunset. And it was there I would sit as the air grew heavy with the balmy scents of the south. As the tropical darkness enveloped me in its comforting arms. With a backyard like this, I would tell myself, this new life really wasn't so bad after all.

My house was my center. It was my home.

It was a home full of laughter and love and family. A place where I wasn't a stranger to my surroundings. In my first years there, the house played host to countless visitors from my old life, who arrived toting open arms and an exquisite familiarity. And in later years it was filled with new friends, who brought a touch of comfort to a life that never quite stopped being new. When my sisters and I went away to college and beyond, it was never the city that we yearned to return to. It was the house that had become a home.

And after fourteen years, when the business was sold, and our old life in Pittsburgh beckoned once more, it was the house - not the city - that made it hard to say good-bye.

But we did say good-bye, hung a sign in the front yard, and hoped the house would sell, despite the depressed Florida real estate market. No houses were moving, and no one had much hope, so my parents settled in to Pittsburgh as if they had never left, figured that the house would sell when it did, and decided not to worry overmuch about it.

But a few weeks later, much to everyone's surprise, they got an offer on the house. The buyer wanted to pay cash and close quickly. A date was set, papers were signed, and then the house was no longer mine. And relief merged with sadness, because the house really was a good home.

Exactly thirty days after the closing I got the call. It was my mom.

She told me that earlier in the day, the house that was my home had burned to the ground.

There was nothing left.

Not of the house. Not for us. Not in Jacksonville. Not anymore.

I heard words like "electric" and construction" and "possible arson" and that may have been what caused the fire, but that's not what the fire meant. Not to me.

The house was telling me that it was time to go. That we were right to leave.

That the house was no longer my home.

19 comments:

  1. Oh my gosh, how shocking and sad! It's strange how life sometimes comes by and puts a period where we wanted to leave an ellipses.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank God you were no longer in the hoke, but still, how sad. A house can be like a non-sentient being, kind of like family in a way, a friend, keeper of memories.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I love how you turned it into a positive of moving on! Fires scare the living daylight out of me. I'm so glad you were well removed from that. I Hope the new owners were ok! Very sad.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Oh thank goodness for good timing... So glad that you weren't living there at the time. So glad...

    ReplyDelete
  5. Wow. I agree - so good that you weren't there at the time!

    ReplyDelete
  6. I love your description of how the "air grew heavy" and I can just see that swing.
    I'm so sorry you lost the house that carried all of these happy memories, but so glad you weren't there to witness it.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Honestly, I am sort of in shock at how young you are, but I will get over that. I love the writing here too and I have heard that having a house burn down is ineffably traumatic. The timing is pretty interesting in your story. I am so glad you were safe. When you were 15, what kind of work did you do?

    Honestly, I never get tired of your writing.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I don't think that any comment I have ever received in the eight months that I have been blogging has meant more to me than this one, because I am so in awe of your writing, and your stories. Thank you so much for stopping by here, for reading what I write, for commenting, and for sharing your amazing talent on your own blog.

      Delete
  8. I'm so glad that you were able to find a positive outlook on the situation. And that you truly are home.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I'm choked up!! This is such a great piece, the sadness is palpable. Homes. Houses. The attachment we get to them and then their fate when we leave them. Sometimes that is unbearable to me. Very emotional piece.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Nice writing, Samantha. You have quite a career ahead of you, I think, if you choose to pursue writing in any way. You know how to tell a story. I had this exact same thing happen to me years ago. I sold a house, went back to visit it with a friend from out of town, maybe a few months after it was sold, and saw that it had burned to the ground. I know the feeling you describe so well here.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you so much Stephanie! I do want to pursue writing, but haven't quite decided in what way. I know I have a book in me (or maybe more than one), and have been working on getting it onto pages. Isn't it weird when parts of our past just stop existing? It feels so strange and far away, almost like that part of life didn't happen, or happened to someone else.

      Delete
  11. Another great post, Samantha! You blow me away every week! I could feel the pain and hope in your words and admire your passionate storytelling. Well done!

    ReplyDelete
  12. What a beautifully sad, haunting story. It's interesting how you can live the same amount of time somewhere and yet the new place never really sinks its roots into you. Then there are other places that feel like home right from the beginning.

    Part of my elementary school burned down years after I had left. I had been badly bullied there and when my old classroom burned down, it felt like somehow because the physical structure was gone that maybe none of it had really happened. It was very disorienting, and I'm intrigued by the sense of peace and acceptance I heard in the end of your story.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Samantha, you are so gifted. I really enjoy your writing -- such depth and incredible story telling.

    On a personal note, my childhood home and all the other houses in our neighborhood were razed and replaced by an industrial park. About 20 years ago, some relatives and I went back to try to figure out where it had been. It was heartbreaking to find it replaced by a stark, generic building.

    I still dream of that house.

    ReplyDelete
  14. I've never really moved out of my houses except when I went to college but my home was always there. My first job outof school was a fire adjuster for State Farm and I understood the devastation of losing everything. What I loved here, besides the great words you choose to tell your tale, is the message of moving on!

    ReplyDelete
  15. I loved how you made the house a character. I can relate, not to the fire, but to how a house can mean so much. The day we sold my grandma's house was devastating. I would drive by afterward and not be able to believe that I couldn't just walk in there anymore.

    I loved your ending lines.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Wow, what a shocking twist. I guess it confirmed that it was time to move on, but a difficult way to be forced into accepting that.

    ReplyDelete
  17. i am perusing your blog, and i have to say as your former neighbor, i also loved that house so so much. i have so many wonderful memories of holidays, lazy shabbat afternoons, barbecures, tv-watching, deck lounging, etc. with lots of love to your family.

    ReplyDelete