Haunting Dreams

I'm there again. The house is different, slightly. I'm older. This time I'm buying the house and my father is with me, and we're walking around, looking at it.

This time the house is different, bigger, more rooms...rooms that were there before but we never noticed.

Each dream is unique, never quite the same. But each dream features that house.

Perhaps a part of our childhood will stay with us always, perhaps some parts are better as memories. Those memories can be so strong, so overpowering.

For the biggest part of my childhood, age 5 through 11, I lived in an old house in Sanford, Florida. It was over a hundred years old at the time, white, frame, two stories, large yard. It was the perfect house. Our later abodes were far less memorable in many ways....a mobile home, a tiny rented house, a two bedroom one bath ranch....

It's natural to remember that old house with fond memories, but things in my later life were so underwhelming, so disappointing, that the old house in Sanford was raised to lofty proportions. The morning after we moved out I woke up, looked around, and realized with sadness that we weren't there anymore. From that moment until the present, I have been haunted with dreams of the old place. Sometimes I will dream about it every night, sometimes I will go months without dreaming of it. But the dreams always return. Sometimes I'm buying the house, moving back in, sometimes it's bigger, more grandiose. It is impossible to describe how real some of those dreams are, so utterly real. I know, absolutely KNOW it's real as it's happening, I say to myself "This is real, this time I'm not dreaming, I'm really HERE". Without fail, every awakening brings sadness and overwhelming emptiness.

Last week I went back there. It's been 30 years. But I went back. As I drove up the street towards it, everything was familiar. I'd never left. Then...there it was. Look at it. I don't say a word, I just look, I look at the yard, I look at the windows, the front porch, the trees, the sidewalk. I get out of the car and walk around. Every board, every shrub is familiar. I know that place, I never forgot it.

It's yellow. It has vinyl siding...used to be white wood, the shrubs are very overgrown, the grass is not kept up. The whole neighborhood has gone downhill. There's a crazy, zig-zag fence in the backyard, and a huge metal garage in the far back, like for a business.

The whole place has shrunk. I don't know how, I'm no expert in physics, but I know it's smaller. The giant yard that hosted many a game of kick ball, now seems not giant at all. The big, wrap around porch is not very big. Even the length from the front steps to the sidewalk is smaller. The other houses in the neighborhood have gone through similar transitions.

There's a giant live-oak tree in the side yard that stretches over the whole yard and to the sky. My dad once threw a long rope over a high branch and made a swing for us....that branch was a mile high. That tree still seems huge, other trees are gone. Others....well, it's been 30 years, others are very big and old, but didn't exist when I lived there.

I was very tempted to walk up and ring the bell. I could ask to look around. I could offer to buy the place, it certainly needed fixing up. A crooked flag was strung across the front porch between two columns, an old sofa was on a side porch. I could restore it, put it back to it's former glory. Maybe it could blossom again, maybe it could grow again.

Maybe someday.

I walked back to my minivan, and told the wife and kids "Alright, let's go".