The gigantic lettering on the white background should say Hanes instead of Lowe’s. The house has been caught in its underwear. But a house is neither a plumber, stooped to do his job while displaying three inches of peek-a-boo underwear, nor is it the slouched and sloppy wannabe gang banger with his barely-hanging-on undies. Typically, one doesn’t see what’s beneath a house’s siding, its protective exterior veneer.
In this case, a contractor has surgically removed the house’s damaged skin. Over time, it succumbed to dry rot, which gradually ate away the wood siding like a cancer. The disclosed vulnerability invited the appetites of hyena-like termite invaders, patiently awaiting their opportunistic feast.
The house, which we entrust to shelter us, is now in its most vulnerable state. Without outside protection, the Lowes underwear merely hides its shame against total indignity.
In a few short weeks, the house will again be fully clothed in new, high-tech siding, boasting new energy-efficient rebate-worthy windows throughout and upgraded air conditioners surgically implanted into the walls instead of crazily hanging onto window frames. The foliage, trimmed back to the extreme for this reconstructive surgery, will recover and bloom, calling home the temporarily displaced honeybees and hummingbirds. Soon, it will stand out as the most gleaming house on the street.
And I will be proud because this house belongs to me.
One day, inevitably, I will move on to my Permanent Home, and this house will no longer belong to me. The new owners will have no memory of its kindly, welcoming days of service, providing lodging for my guests. Nor will they recall the rowdy noise of laughter, the boisterous joy of holidays, and even the occasional weeping, all of which left their indelible marks within its walls. They will know nothing of the hospitality of its front yard—the children’s Slip ‘n’ Slide gatherings, and later, for those same children, the wedding receptions.
The blueprints will tell the new owners it is the same house, but it really won’t quite be the same house for them.
They will have missed this parental-like connection; they will not have seen the house at its most vulnerable, standing in its Lowes underwear, with the labels showing. They will not know of our efforts to save her from decay.
For each of us, the place we call home harbors significant events and memories of our lives, secreting them from others, selfishly enshrining them as our own private treasures.