The Illusion of Permanence

I was out doing errands with M ... picking up a birthday cake for a 15 year old wondrous grandchild. Took a back way to avoid the main-drag potholes. Potholes are the talk of the town as March approaches ... potholes and the cold and snowy Winter. We drove by a house ... Pennsylvania field stone. It was for sale. I thought to myself ... "Another family moving on."

I wondered about their story ... the story of the family that moved on. Of course, in the Modern World, it would be rare to be acquainted of the story of this family that moved on. I knew two people who lived not far from that house but it was unlikely that either Danny or Ilsa would have any information. And I'm not certain that I know them well enough to ask.

It was ... I should say ... it is a big house. Well maintained with stone walls surrounding parts of the property that contained the home of the family I didn't know. It was certainly big enough to have housed parents and a bunch of kids. The driveway was large enough, too, to have held cars ... for parents and adolescents. "Maybe," I thought, "the kids grew up and found girlfriends or boyfriends ... and schools and jobs and were having kids of their own. Maybe Mom and Dad were downsizing, as the euphemism would have it."

Curious how we just don't know. Wouldn't think of knocking on the door to ask ... not in the 21st Century ... not in these times of alienation. "Maybe one of the parents died ... or has Alzheimer's ... or maybe they're ex-hippies moving to Denver to smoke legal Pot ... or to Arizona, now that Gov. Brewer vetoed the bill that would permit restaurateurs to deny them a seat at a counter due to their unconscious homosexual fantasies." I laughed at my thoughts ... quietly. If Emile Zola opined that he came to life to live loudly, he lived in a different county. Here in this shire, we're quiet. And we don't knock on strangers' doors for fear they might shoot us thinking that we had come to shoot them. Was it Hannah Arendt who spoke of living lives of quiet desperation?

I drove on reminding myself ... quietly, need I add ... that even the best of houses are only on loan. ... and loans must be repaid, in spite of any illusions to the contrary. I've lived in our present home and worked in the attached office for 35 years ... We came with three kids, 2, 12 and 13 years old. They grew up. Someday, we'll have to leave.

Tomorrow, M and I will have been together for 49 years and tonight we'll have cake with a 15 year old writer named Sophie and her younger Sisters and her Mom and Dad.

It's not all "play" in the Last Quarter but there are times for that, as well.