Friday, September 10, 2010

A House into a Home...

The crisp morning air assaulted my lungs as I climbed the brushy hillside.  Perched on the precipice above sat the old Victorian mansion.  My first recollections were of this place.  Dark and forbidding, gloomy in my mind, a place where fear roamed every corner and life felt more in limbo than in living.  Dark shadows filled every room.  All windows were kept draped allowing not a single shaft of light inside.  My Mother was the maid servant to the widow who inhabited this house.  I could never, would never, bring myself to call it a home.  The memory of the widow brought gooseflesh even now.  I had longed for the day I would leave these terrifying confines, go out into the world of light and leave this dismal past behind.  When I grew to an age appropriate to depart, I had wasted no time in doing so.  While I lived in the world of light I had never let go of the dark world this place represented.  Always I felt drawn to return.  Years passed while I created a life for myself, a life still attached to the past.  One day a notice arrived announcing that my Mother had died and that she had left me her only possession...the Victorian on the hillside.

Today is my first day back.  So many years later I arrive not in fear of the mansion but in anticipation of living within its confines, shuttered away in the darkness, protected from the light and madness of the world.

13 comments:

  1. A strong and poignant tale. Change comes unnoticed, on occasion.

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  2. You have perked my interest. I do know that the childhood memories are sometimes defeated by returning to the things we didn't want to relive. It is like reaching the age that we have lived and recognizing that we have survived, just like being in a war, surprised that life has move on and we didn't die.

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  3. returning home carries so much weight...or in this case perhaps relief...nice mag!

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  4. So u finally found the house 2 b a sanctuary. Perhaps that is what the widow & also ur mom fouund in its darkness.

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  5. Oh, my. This piece so applies to me. It gave me chills to read it, C.

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  6. Hey, I see you've already got your snow falling over here! Yes! Bring it on!!!

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  7. Hey you guys...I wasn't sure anyone would get it! I am an observer and have repeatedly throughout my life noticed that as people age they seem to be drawn back to whence they came...in this case what appeared so terrifying to a child growing up becomes a sanctuary to a grownup seeking to find solace.

    Thanks! to all who have taken time to respond. It truly warms my heart. I have missed you all this summer. As for you, Willow, I think we may have been twins separated at birth...or perhaps somehow connected in a prior time. As for the snow, I keep it falling year round cause I suppose I'm a winter person.

    Thanks to you all for dropping by, tea is always on so please come again!

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  8. and I thought these were falling stars! Nice Magpie...

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  9. what a chance to experience it now! nice magging!

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  10. what goes around comes around!

    is that snow or are my floaters acting up again?

    Rene

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  11. Thanks, everyone for noticing the snow...I miss it in the summer so decided to keep my snow year round. No, Rene, your floaters are not acting up! You guys make me smile...

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  12. I agree with you that as people age they tend to return to their past.. My grandparents never agreed to move out of our old house... Very nice mag indeed.. Loved the expression "Where life was more in a limbo than in living"...

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  13. This is profoundly beautiful...i love it! :-)

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