The Little White House
Sitting in a quiet inner suburban street, tucked away from the maddening crowds of the city close by, sat the nondescript little white weatherboard house. It was still standing after eighty odd years, still providing refuge and relief from the outside chaos. She had provided for an untold number of people over those years. I couldn't tell you how many. I was never privy to that information. And you know what, I never thought to ask her. But I remember the time she was the house I called home. The place I went to for comfort, to hide away from the encroaching world.
Why do I refer to my former home in the feminine pronoun? I have often thought about this. And I would say because that is what feels right to me. It was a natural assignment of value and identity to that which most people see as lifeless. But to me she was never lifeless. She had a soul. She had a complex personality. She had a caring, mother's embrace. One that I can still feel to this day. Thirty years later. A lifetime has passed since we had our last conversation. I grieve for her, as I have grieved for her so many times since life intervened to send me on my way.
I have lived in other houses. In fact at last count I have resided in over twenty dwellings since those early childhood days. And everyone of them was a house, an apartment, a structure of some sort. Everyone of them was good at its job. But not one of them was a home. Not like she was. I am biased, I know. I hold them all to a high, lofty, perhaps unrealistic expectation. But I bonded with my childhood home. I connected with her. My neural pathways merged with hers. My memories were made there. She watched over them. Held them for me, protected them for me. Perhaps went so far as to remove any unpleasantness from the memories I have brought with me.
You see, the home was my beautiful guardian angel. And she saw everything. Every hand raised in anger, every strap used to shape and mould a growing child. Every dream dismissed, hopes crushed, and energy drained. She saw them all. Yet the love that was missing from the parental figures was made up for in abundance from her. She never told me I was useless, or a sinner worthy of hell. And that was helpful to me. Looking back, with the perspective of an adult, I believe she bore a lot of the negative energy intended for me. I don't know how, but like I said she had a soul, she possessed a wisdom, a knowingness, and a willingness to shield me from the abuse.
She knows all my secrets. Even the ones I can no longer remember, because I am too afraid to look. There are some dark places, hidden in the recesses of my former home. She took them, bore them for me, folded them up, put them away, reassured me I would be alright.
"Don't be afraid," she would say to me on many an occasion. Or were those my recurring dreams? Perhaps she spoke to me in my dreams. She did speak to me, of that I am certain.
"Sleep now, in the morning it will all be okay." I wish it was all just a dream. About a house that loved me, whom I called friend. A childhood fantasy, an imagination run amok. Adulthood being its antidote. But there was no cure. No growing up would take this away. I just needed to embrace reality. My reality. A reality where a house saved my sanity.
And looking back I know I was very quiet in my dealings with her. But I was a child. A frightened child. One who was verbally, emotionally, and physically abused by the majority of authority figures in my life. I had lost the ability to communicate. Or I never developed it in the first place. Words formed in my heart. And died there. But she received them. I wasn't always aware of that. I did not fully grasp how she understood me so well. But a part of her dwelt within me. Within that little child's heart. Within his soul.
But I don't wont to dwell on the bad. There has been far too much of that to go around. I wanted to tell you about my friend. My home. The angel that taught me love. Who showed me compassion. These were valuable lessons for me. And in a way she still resides within me. Within my heart. I think I was very blessed to have a home like her. To have her protection. For the longest time I was envious of others, and their happy family lives. Their mother's love. Their father's protection. But she reminded me, gently, that I did in fact have those things. Just not like the world taught me it was meant to be.
That which made me feel ostracised from life, that which made me feel so different, was that which saved me in the end. The house I grew up in, the place I called home, was the mother I thought I never had.
