This old house

I’m not one for big financial dreams, I don’t play the lottery and though I’m quite good at saving, I’m also quite good at working for free, so I don’t expect to ever build a fortune… but there’s this big old house I sometimes dare to fantasise about what I would do with if I’d ever have that kind of money.

It’s an ancient house, high ceilings, big windows, and tall doors. It’s a two-floor building, though the last time I went inside, probably over 18 years ago, it was already so deteriorated that you could only walk the main floor.

Even back then, when it was still full of life, it was too damaged for anybody’s safety.

Apart from the main house, there were a few annexes on the back, where I once danced, and painted, and cooked… those probably the ones that have suffered the most over time.

As a tiny 7-year-old girl I loved running around those long halls, up and down the stairs, all the way to the back, exploring every single room, chatting with every single person there. Back when I was still bubbly, outspoken and… free. I lost track of the afternoons I spent there afterschool, waiting for my mother to finish working, the school breaks I enjoyed making arts and crafts and learning about disabilities and inclusion without even knowing.

It might have been inside those walls that I first started learning about thinking out of the box and alternative teaching methods. It was certainly there that I started learning about people who were different than me, people who had not been as lucky as me, people who faced unspeakable challenges and conditions and yet were pure and kind and always always welcoming.

It was also there that I took my first steps into the volunteering world, something that up to this day is such a huge part of my life.

After decades of serving its purpose, and being a home for so many, eventually people had to move on to a place with better conditions. Since then, almost two decades ago, it’s been abandoned.

The white and yellow paint on the outside walls has mostly peeled off. It didn’t take long for the windows to be stolen, and for brick to be put in their place. Nurtured by the winter rain, weeds quickly started growing taller than humans and taking up most of the front yard. The annexes in the black seem to have lost most their walls, and after so many years, who knows what’s going on inside and what kind of creatures live there now.

I now live a short 10min walk from this old house… And every time I pass by it, I stop and take a long glance at it. If I squint my eyes, I can still see how it was before, when it was still old and damaged, but not destroyed. I don’t need a house that big. I wouldn’t know what to do with so much space. I certainly will never have enough money to fix it, in fact, I doubt that fixing it is even an option… most likely anyone who gets it would just have to tear it down, and yet… if I could, I would take that old house and make it mine. (19^th Sep 2020)