All along highways and country roads, dark windows stare from forlorn empty houses. Lost houses that sit among the stiff weeds and over grown shrubs tell a story of a family that no longer cared for the memories in a home. A family that needed to move on to something new and better.
Houses show the transitions of current residents and sometimes whole extended families. Back when a family consisted of eight or ten kids, someone always stayed home and took over the original homestead. Now that a family might average two children, those two benefit from their parental attention and are able to attend college and find jobs away from the old hometown. No one is left to take the home and it might be sold to strangers or left unsold among the weeds.
Either way, the setting is changed. Many older homes go to people with no vested interest in maintaining the original aesthetics. That well planned Japanese garden layout needs to be updated to hostas and lilies that are beautiful but take little care in working busy lives. Or the new owners do not relate to the sweat and tears expended to build a home. They paint over oak woodwork and do not trim the hedges. They need an above ground pool for the kids that is soon abandoned and used as a dumpster for broken lawn chairs and red and yellow plastic toys with wheels. Centuries old barns are left to the weather as their roofs wrinkle in storms and never get repaired. Randomly placed pole buildings easily take their place.
Sometimes older homes move into the lives of the young and energetic. New landscaping appears. Twigs are planted in the front yards with wishes of tall flowering shade trees for the hot afternoons of retirement. Every spring, new annuals appear in newly made beds to be mowed around. The house is resided or painted, shutters added or a whole addition appears on the house. Porches and decks appear with fake rattan furniture that will withstand the ages. The home comes alive with activity. The lights are always on.
Other well established homes move past this stage to the empty nests with another flurry of rejuvenation that soon wanes as retirement approaches and the aging couple realizes the children do not come home often, and when they do they urge them to move into a condo. In northern Ohio, many successful retirees are not comfortable in the cold, and they buy Florida condos for the season. Their Ohio homes get pared to a minimum of landscape and care as their bright light is now in the sunny south. Even in the summer, it gets too hot so residents once again abandon the home for a lake house.
As I travel, I try to guess which stage a home might be in. New plants and drives and furniture show love and activity. Pride in the place. Homes to rentals move into disrepair and lack of care for even mowing the grass. Curtains and blinds are awry. The big house on the main road- someone in the house is missing-has a well manicured lawn but no rows of zinnias along the drive. The house goes dark early in the evening. What happened to the family on the corner that made them abandon their home to the bank which has let it all deteriorate beyond hope? For years, I have watched a nearby family home slowly lose its parts till very little of it has a roof and the window left frames a cornfield in the backyard. I wonder if the family fell apart as their family home did.
I feel sad when I see the leftover remains of once thriving families. God bless the people who now demolish the homes they no longer want. They are erased from the land leaving only a stand of shade trees to remind of their existence. And when I forget the house, it will finally be gone. Perhaps next generations, when missing their grandparents, will look at old photos of the homeplace and have reunion picnics under the trees.
They say you can never go home again. But everyone keeps that longing for the original place that really cared for them. We all wish to return to that aged, idealized time and home that was our childhood.
