Sitting in the house on a quiet Sunday morning

It's quiet this morning - only B and I are home at the moment and he's busy with homework. The cats are sleeping, the sun is shining. Knowing how cold it is outside makes the house feel all the more cozy. It's a good morning to sit and reflect.

As I look around the living room, I wonder about the other people who have lived in this house. We've lived here twenty years but the house had another sixty before us. I try to imagine families walking through our rooms, staring at the same walls. Did anyone else have a piano in the living room? I'm guessing someone probably did. I'll bet the house was happy when we brought ours in. Every house deserves a piano - it's a big enough instrument to really fill the space. Music vibrating against walls and rafters, it's got to make a house feel good.

When we have a birthday party I often wonder how many other such parties our house has hosted. Birthdays, anniversaries, good news, sad news - our home has likely witnessed countless occassions. Each one adds another layer like the paint we brush over the walls. Ours is the most recent but the others are there as well, hidden underneath. The death of our first son filled our home with incredible anguish. I wonder if some of the grief that hung in every room permeated plaster and wood, absorbed by the house.

Imagining a home with a memory makes it difficult to see an older empty house. It saddens me to think of the house, full of old memories, sitting there, waiting, wondering where the people have gone and if they will return. It would be an empty feeling - silently aching for the opportunity to return to the purpose for which you were created.