Shelter

I've never been fond or romantic poetry and love songs. The whole idea of another person as the center of my universe doesn't appeal to me these days, and it's never had a big appeal. I guess because no one in my life has ever lived up to those idealized verses and prose. I've never found shelter in another person. It was never for lack of looking or wanting. Many many is the time, even now, when having just one person in my life to provide respite from the frustration and interminably hard work of being alone would have been so welcome.

The closest I guess I've ever come was my father, and my father's house. He was a good man. That's the highest praise I think I can offer him. He was a man who in ever instance I ever saw made the decent kind choice. He was also the one person who I knew would always believe in me. How he managed to instill that sense of unfailing belief I do not know, but I knew no matter what I did he would always support my choices. Being a man and from the old school there weren't many affectionate gestures, but I grew up with this rock in my life. He grew to become the voice in my head. It's his point of view, his visions, his decency that the little voice in my head speaks with. 17 years after his death it's still his voice.

Then there is my father's house. He and my mother bought it at a time and place where owning your own home was a new American glory. That was in the fifties, the post WWII optimism as work. The new dream, the new America. He was proud of that accomplishment. I lived in that house for almost two thirds of my life. I rode out two major earthquakes in that house, and a few dozen minor ones, not to mention death and fear and rage and sorrow. And it sheltered me and kept me safe. Live in one place for so long and it becomes a part of who you are. There are no other childhood memories of home and shelter but that house. It's such a gigantic part of my life. And buying it was one of my father's prouder achievements.

It's a long story, but I've heard that house calling out to me for years, wanting to be saved. I can't explain that, but that's how it's felt. And I've been frustrated by recalcitrant irrational family nonsense every inch of the way in an effort to save it. But now I wonder what it is I'm saving? And what will be left of the only real shelter I've ever known once all the dust settles. The house had a new roof put on twelve years ago. Unfortunately it was put on by idiots with no permanent business address. It leaked virtually from day one. For family reasons that I really don't have the energy or will to explain, while the house belonged to my father's trust I had no say in it's disposition. This time last year I took legal steps to change that. After abandoning the idea that any of my siblings would be helpful, a bizarre belief I've harbored most of my life, I hired a lawyer, borrowed the money and wrestled control of the house from the trustee. I wanted to save it. I wanted to give it whatever it needed and let it go on and house another family and give shelter to another child, and that was the best way to honor my memories.

I found out last night that there is very little left that can be saved. The roof, including beams and even some ceiling joists will have to come completely off. Twelve years of water damage has rotted the beams. The roof, the shelter will be gone, completely gone, the core of the house open to the sky, exposed. The kitchen and bathroom sub floors are rotted. They need to go. The kitchen and bathrooms have to be gutted. Most of the landscaping my father and mother and I planted has gone wild and will simply be stripped away and replaced with green sod. Even the stucco on the outside cannot be saved. It will have to be re stuccoed or sided. In trying to save it we will be creating something unrecognizable.

All I could do last night was walk around and around my own small home and cry and say "I'm sorry" over and over. I know I did all I could. I know there was never anything more I could have done that would have saved the poor house from being stripped to it's studs. I did everything, said everything I could think to in the last ten years and it all fell on deaf ears. But still I feel this overwhelming sense of having let my father down. It's irrational, but somehow, over the decades a house made of wood and stucco and glass becomes more than just a building. It becomes the personification of a life's goals, or many lives goals. It becomes a living creature that you can't simply cut out of your life.