Quiet Pines
The house hadn’t been lived in for at least a two months. Abandoned.
I know because I was the one who threw out all the coupons and all the phonebooks and all the misaddressed mail and all the kitchen appliance catalogs that belonged to the woman who lived there before me.
Behind the property, a half sunken and neglected dock jut out into the lake. Morning light would hit the front two rooms of the home, but sunset would would fill the back patio with blinding brightness and sweep down and over that lake, the rays fanning through the broken planks of the dock.
Neighbors had to come by every few days after I moved in to paint a portrait of the woman who used to live in the lake house.
For a time I enjoyed learning about her and the community with its 47 other residents. But at some point between the praise for her Shepherd’s Pie recipe and looking at newspaper clippings of the high school hockey team that drowned in the lake after their bus hit black ice, you begin to not care.
I never cared enough to believe in ghosts, but I also never cared enough to not believe in them. Either way, I’d be wrong in thinking this place didn’t have any. It does.
My mother used to tell me how every place would collect its own stragglers the longer it stood. “You just gotta learn to not let it bother you.” Like the walk-in closet lightbulbs that never seem to want to stay lit no matter how many of them I replace. I could have an electrician take a look and fix the wiring, but I’d rather just use my phone’s screen to look around inside when I need. I really don’t need to bring upon myself a serious case of haunting.
The homes we have and the ones we make from them are our own spaces, away from the world.
When we’re young, dorms and apartments and houses are still just places we live in for some time which we personalize and assign value to. Once a place becomes a home, that’s when it starts to add value to you.
This lake, this house, this place beyond the pines, is my home.
It looks like many others, but this one is mine.
Listen to the Episode 102 of Comatose — Guns, Noah, and Maine:
Written by Nizar Babul of Comatose.
Comatose is a weekly series of amusing anecdotes, insightful commentary, and pithy stories. Every week three contributors are featured in short segments. The segments, though often unrelated, are tied together using music and narration to set the scene. Relax and enjoy the ride while listening to topics as varied as love, birthdays, and reciprocity.
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