Into The Wind...

I just found out through my sister's blog that the house I grew up in has since been demolished. What stands there now is a new building. For me, it is strange to accept this. I always knew the day would come that the Old House would have to go. But it was such an integral part of our childhood that I had some how thought we'd be apart of the dismantling of it. I remember the pride in which my family took in making it more than just an old wood-framed orange grove house and turning it into a home, building it up to be more than what it was. I always had a fantasy that my sisters (and perhaps even my brother) and I would comb the torn down ruins and hunt for treasure. Sheila and I had a particular fantasy that during the Great Depression the wealthy owners of the orange groves thought to hide their vast fortune in an old coffee can beneath our unlikely house. The date of the construction would match and our imaginations were as wild as the flaming trumpet vines that we drank the sweet nectar from.

Part of me also recalls that this was the last place that I saw my brother. It was the last place we all saw him. In the ever-changing landscape that is Florida, would he some how navigate back to that Old House? If he were to return, called to the place of his departure, would he go to the site of that Old House and some how be confused? Would he see this new building and give up on the past, give up on us? Somehow that building seemed to be the last solid link to my brother. I know that in this age of digital technology, that it's not necessary to have a standing structure of wood and nail to be found... that maybe even now he is quietly lurking in the shadows and reading these words... maybe.

It's funny to think how much I hated living there at the time. It wasn't fancy or new like all the other kids' homes. I remember how we were teased because we hung our clothes out to dry on the clothes line. But looking back, I see the simple pleasures of living there. I remember feeling the sun on my skin as I ran through the sweet smelling sheets billowing in the wind, pretending that they were the sails of a pirate ship or a secret labyrinth or some great impassible wall. I remember the notch in the camphor tree where I hid my treasures. I remember swinging on the tire swing on the slow growing oak dripping with Spanish moss in the backyard. I remember.

And now, our memories are all we have.