My favorite house in Daydreaming on the Porch

I think most of us have ideas about what our “dream” house would be if we could perfectly imagine it, find it, or or even build it . That’s because embedded deep within us is a rather ancient yearning for stability, for a resting place on this old earth that we can call “home.” And more often than not, that notion of “home” is materially realized in a physical structure, an abode, a dwelling place that becomes our sanctuary in this restless, turbulent world.

I don’t own that “dream” house yet, and I don’t really know if I ever will. For now, my “home” is an apartment that I have lived in for almost eight years , and I am really very content there. It is the longest I have ever lived in one place, and that is saying something for a man who has restlessly moved from city to city and place to place for years, never more than four years at any one location.

The neighborhoods surrounding me where I walk are as familiar as those from my childhood. They hold countless reminders that this has become a very special place for me: the little landmarks such as flower-and-vine-covered mailboxes along the streets; specific lawn ornaments; certain distinctive houses and yards; openings in the sky where I watch the sunsets on my walks; the enormous and ancient white oak tree on a vacant, wooded acre or two lot in the middle of a subdivision – a reminder of what the original forest here was like. These familiar sights, this anchoring in a place I call my own neighborhood, give me a very powerful sense of having arrived somewhere and put down roots. And for years I wondered if this would ever happen.

But every now and then, when I am traveling or driving around, I see houses that set my imagination wandering, that stir memories of other places, other times. Just the sight of these houses triggers something in me, imaginings of what might have been or could be.

On a tree-lined street in the historic district of Sumter, a small city in South Carolina, on a corner lot with a sidewalk in front, is a turn-of-the-century house that for more than 30 years, since I first saw it, has stirred my imagination, roused ancient memories of family times together at Christmas, and provided the missing ingredient for the life I might have lived in some past age had different circumstances placed me there. Who knows? There is some reason why this house stirs such deep and passionate feelings within me.

I love to pass by on walks and just look longingly at it. I admire its gracefulness, its beautiful architecture and symmetry. It seems to be so well proportioned.

I love porches, and this house has a big, wide wrap-around porch with rocking chairs which calls to mind a gentler more neighborly era when every house had them and people spent long hours in summer outside talking and laughing, resting, daydreaming on a swing hung from the porch’s ceiling or greeting neighbors who stopped by. Children played in the yard or on the sidewalk, or in the small city park that was nearby.

I can imagine entering the front door and noticing a slightly musty, old-house smell. Memories from childhood would immediately come to mind. There would be a worn rug on the wooden floor in the hallway adjacent to the stairs that lead to three upstairs bedrooms. A parlor to my left would have comfortably upholstered old furniture, a glass bookcase with volumes of Dickens, Mark Twain and Shakespeare, a fireplace, and windows that opened out onto a shady yard.

When I pass this house, I think of the decades that people have lived there. I wonder about the holiday feasts that filled the home with happy relatives and friends. I can smell the roasting turkey or fried fish dinners at midday with cornbread and poll beans and fatback and rice and gravy. Such indescribable aromas, for those are the smells I remember from my aunt’s kitchen during blissful days of summer vacation far from my own childhood house in New Orleans. I can imagine all this in that old house.

Yes, I think this house I have been describing and imaging must be my all-time favorite. I have never been inside it. I know nothing in particular about its history. Yet I do know that it must hold many lovingly guarded and cherished memories for several generations who have been lucky enough to call it “home.”

(Reposted from my Open Diary entry of Feb. 18, 2003. Recently it was for sale and I went online and toured the interior of the house. The circle is complete. How time has flown.)