Dream Houses

            She needed to borrow my house for a while.  Not the house I owned down the street, but the house I was living in presently.  Thus, I would swap houses for a time.

            The other house was vacant and in disrepair.  For unknown reasons, I had neither sold nor rented it.  And now my son and I would occupy it again.

            As Jean settled into my current home, I went to check out my former home.  I remembered its odd floor plan and the disarray in which I had left it.  Still, walking through, I saw it through new eyes.

            The main room and kitchen, though small and shabby, were serviceable.  From there I walked up the stairs to my old bedroom.  Immediately, memories of a long-ago contentment enveloped me.  How had I forgotten the cityscape from my two walls of windows?  And the built-in shelves and drawers that lined the long corridor of the walk-in closet?

            My children’s rooms were still filled with their clothing and toys.  I thought about having a yard sale and sending the proceeds from Dana’s stuff to her.  Joseph would stay in his old room, and I doubted he would want to get rid of anything.

            I decided to go down to the basement, but the stairs were sheared off.  I looked below and saw years of accumulation stacked in long rows.   Darting around on that damp cement floor were several of Jack’s cats which must have been left behind.  They seemed healthy and content.  It would be dangerous, if not impossible, to reach the basement without the stairs intact.  No problem:  there was no reason for me to enter that crowded, confused space again.  The important thing was to carefully lock the door at the top of the stairs so that no one would get hurt trying to go down.  Some messes cannot be cleaned up and must be left--a fact which I calmly accepted for the first time.

            And then I woke up.