empty houses

Do you know that feeling when the house is empty? All of the furniture has been taken away. The suitcases are packed and ready to go. The movers have taken away all of the boxes. Dust that has been hiding for years overtakes the house, the house is empty but you are still there. It is no longer your house but for the moment you have nowhere else to live.

The first empty house I remember was Glendon Road in Cleveland. Mom and I had gone out to dinner with Tania and her mom. Afterwards they drove us home and came in. The house all of us remember, our house, the one where Tania and I had slumber parties and called boys and dipped potato chips in cream cheese, that house was gone. It was empty except for the slight lingering smell of our dog Athena who died the year before. The dog that no one ever taught to go to the bathroom outside. I've been back to that house as an adult, it still smells like Athena. The house that Beth and Phil and Jon lived in and Dad, that house was gone. Still mom and I would be sleeping there that night (where were our beds? Did we sleep on the floor in the living room?)and after Tania and her mom left we had nothing to do.

The TV was gone. I suggested we go to the library and check out books for ourselves but it was 9:00 pm the library closed. Mom reminded me that even if it was open we would need to return the books the next morning before we went to the airport we couldn't take them with us. Oh yeah. We were moving. Also we no longer had a car, going anywhere was out of the question. We went to sleep, we must have. We got up the next morning and left.

Jeff and I camped out on the floor in Boston. We still had the tv but the bed was gone. We slept in our sleeping bags in the living room and watched Grease. I've seen Grease 57 times. Really, that time was the 57th. I haven't seen it since. That was the best time. We were newly married and moving about a mile away. We were moving from a one bedroom apartment to the bottom floor of a two bedroom house. We were moving because we felt like it. The house was nicer than the apartment. It was simultaneously roomier and cozier. Moving was our way of celebrating our marriage. It was the way we marked our transition from engaged to married. How carelessly we said goodbye to this first apartment of ours! This was the last place of mine that mom ever saw.

We really did love that house in Brighton. We entertained there. We decorated and hosted visitors and bought furniture. I learned how to cook in that house. That house contained all of our happiness from our first years of marriage and nearly burst with the hopefulness of us. It was our home and it took very good care of us. It somehow still looked good even when it was empty. We left a lot of stuff there. In the end we piled up anything we didn't know what to do with and left inside the house. We abandoned that house. We had to. It was the only way we could leave. We were going to California.

The house in Redwood City was large without being cozy. We had deer there, actual deer. On the day we left Jeff spilled coffee on the white gray carpet of the cottage that never felt like ours. That house contained mostly our disappointment. We left nothing behind and we paid to have it professionally cleaned. They got everything but the coffee spill. The thing about that house was that it was always empty. We were never able to fill it with the hope that we had in Brighton. We didn't recognize ourselves in that part of California.

Two more houses emptied out in California before we found a home there. Somehow four years after moving to California we realized we were happy there. We had Mira and Eli. We made friends, we got back a little of the hope that we lost when we moved. But we couldn't stay. We didn't empty out that last house together. I took the kids to Laura's and Jeff and the movers emptied out the house. When the kids and I returned in the afternoon the house was no longer ours. The porch was a porch and not a playroom. We left our junk there once again and fled. We slept in a hotel that night. Mira called the hotel room "Portland".

I never saw mom or dad's houses when they were empty, I don't think I could have stood it. There is nothing sadder really than an empty house. The house is like the body that contains the soul. Maybe not as important but still vital. Vital to the survival of the inhabitants. I try to imagine this house emptied and I can't do it. It is so full of us. We are back. This house takes good care of us like the one in Brighton did. It contains us well.