Just a Trip South and An Old House

Yesterday, I took a business trip two hours south. Traffic stopped at one point on the high way and I looked to my right at an old two story colonial house on a few acres in Maryland. Old is the key work. Not in great shape but okay. I thought to myself, wow, there has been a lot of living in that house. Lovers, children, heataches, crying, laughing, dying. All in those rooms. I could live there.

On the way home, four hours later, I looked at the same house. It had burned down. It was all black. It was still standing like a shadow of the lifes, dreams and stories that once had filled her rooms.

Lots of people, stopped in their cars and gathered on the street looked at that old house. But, me and that old house had lived a little together. We had taken a journey through time with each other. He had held hands and stared into each others eyes. We had dreamed and wanted more. The rest of the people gathered round, had only chased an ambulance, attended a funeral, but they had never even had a moment with her. Some how, she must of know that I cared. I cared about happened in her walls and in the craddle of her arms in the warmth of her wooden embrace.

I drove on wondering what good fortune had allowed the traffic to stop those long moments and allow me to spend a few minutes with her on her last day.