The house I will live in is too big for me. It doesn't have a white picket fence. It sits like a block on a raised foundation, and the driveway runs under an upper story room to a four car garage with a carriage house. The carriage house has a weather vane shaped like a rooster. It spins when the wind blows.
The white cedar clapboard siding grows big to the third story and bounces out into additions we might not know about. Stained glass sits in bows above the windows. The bathrooms have clawfoot tubs and wide round sinks. The tile is a bunch of old hexagons married together like peas in a pod. Black grout lives between them like memories we forgot.
If you explore, the mailbox is an old milk delivery hatch that smells of roses. If you explore, you will find long lost wee toys in the grates of the relieved heater vents. If you explore, you will find me like a lost skinny child peeling layers of paint. When you explore, you will discover dimensions of yourself you never, ever dreamed upon.
In the spring, the lawn sprouts an army of daffodils, bunched like weary soldiers against a wall of white. The winter just brings white. The autumn breaches an old oak and colorful leaves that lie like spoons on manicured grass. Summer comes with open windows and beams of light that capture bits of mote that represent our fate. If you are scared, curl up and be warm. This is the place.
Oak floors creak in the house I will live in. They remind us of the sneaking suspicion of adolescence, after we have escaped the confines of parental authority and embraced the wonder of soft lips on a girl. We remember just the creaks, of a time before we were lost, before we were found. This time it meant. The oak floors still creak they are in an old place, cut up and stuck.
When I live in this house, I will have a dog. His name will be Helmut. His breed will be Labrador. That isn't in Germany. He will be a happy dog with a block head. He will herd the children like sheep and guard them like a burly brother. When they are sick or tired, he will settle down with his warmth, close to them until they sleep. He will wag his tail when I get home and lick us all on the balls of our cheeks with his tongue.
Each moment, when I walk up the concrete steps, I will be filled with joy. Joy like waking from a wondrous dream we are about to forget, joy like finding your shadow in the shade on a too hot day. (If you erupt a sigh now, know this will be yours). Imagine the nooks of the basement.
These days, I let my eyes close tight. I persuade my imagination to wonder about possibility. Falling into the banked lawn, I mark my territory with a snow angel. I wonder how warm the blue flickering television light is for the people that live there now. The blue light cascades through the windows, deep into me and they must know that they live in my destiny.