It's not the cute, new puppy everyone says "Awww" when they see. It's the half-blind, grey-behind-the-ears, flea-bitten grandpa dog off by itself in the corner. You know he's seen better days...and probably a few worse ones. If not for a gracious caretaker, he would sit there, sad and alone to finish out his days with nothing but memories.
Our house, like grandpa dog, was alone for several months before us. Because of a new children's center, we are the last occupants the house will likely ever see. Casting aside its years of service, the city's going to dismantle it or, at best, move it out of city limits to join a graveyard of houses that have met similar fates. Meanwhile, we are borrowing its last few months, and I always wonder what it has seen and what memories it holds.
Our visitors give me a few ideas. No one walks in and exclaims, "What a NICE house!" Instead, they get misty-eyed and reminisce about the place they lived when they were first married. They touch its hardwood frame and smile knowingly as if remembering the first meal they shared sitting on milk crates across a cardboard box that served as dining room furniture.
They tell us it looks like a mansion compared to where THEY lived (and we think where they live now actually IS a mansion). And then come the stories of the lives they have lived, their eyes envisioning for us the hope of our memories that are yet to be made.
They say, "You'll have the best times of your married life in this house." And that's good to remember when I kill a spider in the bathtub or suffer near heat exhaustion baking my first cherry pie in the distant-from-a/c-kitchen.
But it feels like home, and I feel honored to join the others who have shared the house's history. Like an old pet, the house and its memories will be difficult to part with at the end, but I'm looking forward to the life we'll share while we are together.
