two houses, one city

I know the layouts so well, I could navigate them blindfolded, in my sleep, in my dreams, drugged, drunk, through somebody else's eyes, on an overhead layout. I'd recognize the floorplans anywhere. I know these houses better than the back of my hand. I've never stumbled through the back of my hand in the haze of a bad dream to find comfort.

One is a ranch style house, so American, so typical, so suburban. There is a formal living room and dining room that only get used at Christmas and Thanksgiving. There is a den with light wood paneling. There is a huge 50's style kitchen with an obscene lack of counter space. It's obvious that you are meant to entertain in this kitchen, not cook in it. There is a long hallway with three bedrooms. Blue, pink and red. The house has been redecorated a few times, but the colors are pretty much the same, tan for the hallway, red in the master's, blue in the guest, pink in the back bedroom. The back bedroom was my dad's (it probably wasn't pink then) then it was mine. The front bedroom is supposed to be the guest bedroom, but in my mind it is and will always be Grandma Lena's room, even though she died in 1995. I can still remember the first time I came to visit and slept in the blue bedroom - I might as well have been sleeping on the carport, it felt so alien to me.

This house is gumbo and red beans and rice and etouffee and Christmas and Thanksgiving and Mardi Gras and football and crawfish boils. Carrie across the street, standing on the neutral ground yelling, "Hey!! Can you spend the night???" Wednesday night dance lessons, spaghetti and meatballs. My first car. A divot in the corner of the lawn where my Grandma always runs over the grass when she pulls into the driveway in her giant Cadillac. African violets and wandering Jew on the front porch, Creole tomatoes and strawberry plants in the backyard. Saturday morning breakfasts at McDonald's with my Poppa. Slip and slide. Homemade ice cream. Two broken arms, one chipped tooth and countless skinned knees were earned on the sidewalks in front of that house. This house is home.

The other house is a dark green cement block duplex that is almost completely obscured by a giant holly tree. It has the most cramped staircase in the history of cramped staircases. The woman who lives there is one of the smartest, funniest, wordiest, most literate women I've ever met. She's the reason I read. She's the reason I write. She has a cheap cabinet, the kind you put next to your desk to keep your office supplies in, that's covered with bumper stickers from all over the place. She used to have an antique victrola, but got rid of it. I'm OK with that - but I think if anything happens to the bumper sticker cabinet, I'll be bummed. She has a collection of Pogo comic books.

This house is Beatles albums and jazz and books and talking till two AM and the big blue van that we drove everywhere and camping in the Ozarks and going to Nebraska to see my Uncle Mike and cats and crazy dog after crazy dog and horse people learning to live without horses and stories about my nutty relatives and the Depression and World War II and my grandfather who I never really got to know. My bus stop was across the street - cold mornings (cold to me!) that I spent rehearsing my tap dance numbers, a crazy 9-year old girl, tap dancing away in the New Orleans mist, trying to stay warm - a whole busload of kids and a mystified bus driver watching her, trying to figure out what the hell she was doing. Monty Python, Benny Hill, Dr. Who, Fawlty Towers. This house is my friend Blair and the cabinet covered with bumper stickers and the bottle collection and trips to San Antonio. This house is enchilada pie and Mexican meatloaf and snacking on olives out of my grandmother's martini while we waited on our food at a restaurant. This house is home.

The people are safe. One set is at my dad's, driving him insane, but doing it safely. The other is (last I heard) in Birmingham, driving each other crazy, traveling in a tan van with two full-sized dogs. The people, the important part, the good stuff, that is safe. I know this. I know that the houses are just that - houses. I know they are bricks and wood and nails and insulation. I know that the things within them are just things and in the grand scheme of it all, things are incredibly replaceable. It's just a house, it's just a house, it's just a house. I know this to be true. But these houses, these simple contraptions of wood and cement and nails and all the things within them are the things that my grandparents have spent their lives working towards. It's just a house, it's just a house, it's just a house. Please let them just be houses that are still standing when they go back to them.