Red's Wrap
Happiness. It's relative.
The Drive-By
They drove past twice, each time, slowing the car and looking up at my window. I stepped back so they wouldn’t see me looking back. How queer is it that I would see them at the exact moment they stopped in front of my house, both times? Do I have nothing else to do but watch for observers?
The third time, they pulled their car to a stop and parked. First the driver and then his two passengers, a man and a woman, all three in their fifties, pudgy and tucked in, belts that matched as if they had planned their touring clothes ahead of time. They stood on the sidewalk and looked, first at the porch, and then up again at my window, then the roofline. If they had had clipboards, I’d have thought they were tax assessors from the city.
Their looking at my house so intently irked me. It’s impolite to stare, hadn’t their mother taught them that? And they were beginning to act familiar, taking liberties, not respecting the boundaries of my house by looking at it so intently, inspecting. Who were they to inspect my house?
“Our father grew up here,” the driver explained after I went outside to ask them, somewhat curtly, if I could help them. “Can I help you?” I asked as if they were shoppers wandering up and down the aisles of my father’s Ben Franklin Store.
They recounted to me all the times their father had driven past the house to show it to them and how they themselves had had to drive up and down the streets in the neighborhood until they finally found what they were looking for – a gray house that was now painted light green. They reminded me that they’d come by fifteen years before and shown me a photo of our living room where two sofas faced each other perpendicular to the brick fireplace. The gas lamps were visible in the photo taken a few years after the house was built in 1913.
I remembered at the time of their first visit that I’d wished I’d gotten their names and found a way to have a copy of the photo made. And here they were again. I could ask.
The driver asked me if the house was for sale. I said no. If it had been, I wouldn’t have told them. Something in me didn’t want to give a whisper that my relationship with the house was in any way shaky or iffy. No, my house isn’t available, not available, not for sale, no.
I let them drive off again without getting their names or inquiring about the photograph. They were nice enough, very polite. They just had a claiming feel to them that made me want to erect a stone wall in my front yard and install a gate with a giant lock to protect my house from reclamation by someone with older ties than mine.
So ungenerous of me. I had so often done the same thing, driven past my grandmother’s house in Hastings, Michigan, still incredulous forty years later that someone else owned her house, someone else sat everyday in the dining room where I had eaten Thanksgiving dinner, and might be wondering why the car out front slowed down and the woman in the passenger seat rolled down her window and looked up at the window with such yearning it could be felt in the house like a cloud let in by mistake.
We never forget what’s ours no matter who owns it.
14 Comments on “The Drive-By”
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Oh, I have done this so many times myself! My parents bought what I still think of as “my house” a few years before I was born and my mother hung onto it for a few years after their divorce (which happened when I was 21 and had already moved out). She since moved a few blocks away but whenever I visit her, I have to go past the old house and take a look. A long look. I always wonder how it can look so soulless, now, too. How judgemental is that!? I really really loved this line: “…and looked up at the window with such yearning it could be felt in the house like a cloud let in by mistake.” Lovely piece; you really give us the essence of all those emotions.
a bittersweet piece. i like how you connected the stories, from these visitors stopping by years ago, returning, and then you relating to how you did the same thing when you drove by your grandmother’s house. and that last line, it packs a punch. well said.
We sold our home back in California. The lady who bought it had once rented and lived there, and forced to move when it went up for sale. It passed through several owners by the time we bought it. That she was able to own the house, gave us a lot of joy. Moving out was hard though. We had lived there for 42 years. A lot of memories remain.
I have this proprietary feeling about so many places… I feel a little caught.
This is fantastic! It makes me think of my grandmother’s house and how, to this day, I feel utterly violated that someone else lives there. How dare they! Great post!
Thank you! It’s always about the grandmothers, right? We are so attached to them and their places.
I think I have done this too. My grandparents’ home is no longer there.It’s been demolished to make way for another apartment, but I can still feel all those memories when I drive past. I would be there by your side if you erected that wall. I would!
I could relate to your reluctance to let those strangers in any further and the way they’re presence triggered a possessiveness.
Great use of the prompt!
I do the same thing. Every time I return to North Carolina, I pile the kids in the car and drive them by the first house. They don’t remember living there, as much as I want them to. I suppose I just want them to know how much they have always been loved.
I specialize in drive-by yearnings.
I have driven by every house I’ve ever owned, when I go back for visits (the house I grew up in, and also those I’ve owned as an adult). There is something very human-nature-y about that.
Me too!! I gives me a warm connected feeling to my own self and history when I go back and remember…
I’ve been guilty of the same behavior with my parents old home. It’s strange the attachments we never seem to let go of, while others are tossed away without thought.