The weathered, gray rocks shine with a certain type of limerence I never really noticed before.
Perhaps because it’ll be my last time seeing them.
The courtyard seems grand from up here. I’ve stepped up the path of granite to observe the richness of it all. The rose branches, barren with the promise of warming winds, lean towards the ground, while the gazebo and old basketball hoop glint with the waning tide of sunlight. The steadfast pillars, once seeming so reliable in their state, seem to have adopted a gray hue despite their white paint.
Maybe it’s just the shadows, but it feels like so much more than that.
I grew up here, laughing as I wheeled my grandpa around in his wheelchair and scratching Boots, the beloved orange cat, behind her ears on the doorstep. My footprint is etched as a distant memory in the resolute concrete of the driveway, whispers of old rubber soles remaining as dust on the retreating figures of visiting vehicles.
It was never my main house, but I know I could guide myself blindfolded through the house and its gardens without losing my footing.
Inside, it’s even colder, in more ways than one.
The heating has been cut off, but the walls are devoid of family heirlooms, the kitchen counter bare without the latest magazines and library books, and each room sits in silence without the well-loved armchairs and crackling couches.
I shiver in the unfamiliarity.
It’s not one of my homes anymore.
In three days, this place will become occupied by a new family, with new aspirations and lives to live. They won’t know how this house, for 30 years, hosted birthday parties, family reunions, and calm conversations. The ubiquitous grilled cheeses made by my grandma will fade from evocation, as will the nature documentaries watched with my grandpa in the basement theater.
The walls are sagging with the weight of memory—dances after cake and ice cream, Sorry on a summer afternoon, homework and travel itineraries spilt across the dining table.
I can feel the sinewed, sweet life in every inch of these walls, recollect a memory as I stroll past a missed tax paper and a pink string from one of Boots’s toys.
I spent so much time yearning, wanting, watching, waiting, shining, dancing, crying, and sitting in this house that it feels like a part of me—as it does for my sister, my dad, and anyone that has ever visited the mansion at the end of the road, where it meets the river.
Even so, the sun still shines bright here, as it always does. The branches rustle, the river flows, and the wooden staircases creak, waiting to be loved by another.
It’s not my place anymore, so I watch as ghosts of past conversations and missed calls rustle from the architecture, stretching as if awoken from a long slumber.
I see everyone in my family here, as well as a friend, a cat I never met, and another I would die for.
They titter and cry as the skylight in the beige kitchen opens, and then they slowly fade into the night air, whispering tales of sorrow and happiness as they whisk away, gone but not forgotten.
No, to us, they’ll always hold a residence in the bones of Sandy Hollow and in the minds and souls of everyone who found love there.
For now and forevermore, I hope that this beautiful place will continue to provide a warm shelter for parties, conversations, and grilled cheeses, even if it doesn’t make sense anymore.
