The House

The last part of my long commute home winds through a really beautiful neighborhood. I love this part of the drive, especially in winter. I am a total voyeur, and in the winter, the houses are neighborhood are lit up with light, giving me a view into the homes, the lives of the people who live there.


I go by the house with the dining room that has a huge abstract painting in it. I go by the modern house with the shades that only let you see shadows inside. I go by the house with the garish blue room. I go by the house with the room that is seemingly only lit by a computer screen. The house where no one is ever home.


Of all the houses I pass, there is one house that stands out for me. I adore this house. It’s a beautiful yellow Victorian house. I used to live on the other side of this house, and my kitchen window overlooked their kitchen window. My commute home now puts me in front of the house at a stop sign, where I get to take a moment and again take in the beauty of The House. The sweet details like the scalloped woodwork and the huge front porch. The Cathedral windows. The Christmas wreath. The full bins on recycle night.


What I love most about this house is the way it’s so lived in. In the fall, there are always bikes and balls laying on the lawn. There are lots of benches and chairs on the front porch, all of them mismatched and well used. There’s a Celtic cross made of stained glass in the window.


My glimpses inside the house have revealed a small nook where there’s usually someone working on a computer. Sometimes there are two people present, and I imagine that there’s homework going on. The dining room always is bathed in warm light and there’s usually flowers on the table.


When I look at this house I feel a sense of life coming from it. There’s a warmth and energy that radiates from it, and I find myself wanting to be a part of it.


The other night, when I drove by the house, the road was blocked off and there were fire trucks on the street. No traffic was getting through, so I had to take a detour. The following night, on the way home, I saw the reason for the fire trucks. It was The House. And as I stopped at the stop sign, I looked for the signs of warmth and love that I usually see, but all I saw was disaster. Fire had ripped through The House, leaving a whole side of it charred with black. The windows were gone and boarded up. There was a red X with a box around it painted onto the house.


I wondered about the family who lived there. The silhouettes of people who I saw from my car. Were they safe? Were they scared? Where are they taking their meals? What would they do, and would they ever feel secure again.


When I pass The House now, I am reminded of how our lives revolve around the routine. Every night, I drive the same route home at the same time of day. And when I do, there they are - the people in The House, living out their own routine, doing their homework, putting flowers on their table, making dinner.


Until, one night that, changed. One night the people in the house weren’t there, and their routine and their lives were dramatically changed.


Which also changed me. Now, when I complete my routine and arrive home and see the lights in the windows, I feel deep sense of gratitude for all that is still standing, all that is inside my house. Gratitude that is sometimes blurred by the same routine that presented The House to me in the first place. The routine where days turn into weeks, and weeks turn into months, then years. In the monotony of the routine, it’s easier to look into someone else’s windows and see the beauty of their life than it is to see the beauty that is right in front of you.


But it’s there, if only you look for it.