Going home

He'd left home when he was 17, maybe before. It hadn't been his home, but someone else's, so at 17 he began a new home. Most of the time he was never there, he was busy wandering the neighborhood, or knocking on other people's homes, or sitting with them in their living room.

Over the years he had knocked on a number of doors, and a few had let him in. Most told him to go away. He would look in through the windows at night, when the lights were on inside, watching families sit down to eat, watching couples snuggling on the couch, wishing that he had a home like that to go to.

One day he found a home he really liked. The woman who lived there was working in her garden, and he stopped to chat, at first over the fence, and not quite sure he wanted to go in through the gate, but she invited him in and before he knew it he was in her yard.

They continued to talk and he would often stop by to see if she was home. They'd stand in the doorway and talk, and sometimes she'd invite him into the living room where it was nice and warm. Some days he'd be present, engaged, listening and talking and things would be comfortable. On other days he'd seem distracted. They'd stand in the doorway and he'd look over her shoulder into the living room, or they'd sit in the living room and he'd find his eyes wandering to her bedroom door, which was always closed, except for one time when it was cracked just a bit.

On those days she would become frustrated. "What do you want? Are you listening?" she'd say. "Are you here to visit or to scope out the place to break in when I'm gone or asleep?" He'd apologize, say that wasn't the intent, and things would go back to normal. "I'll concentrate more," he thought "I'll be engaged. I'll be present." But then he'd find himself longing to see other rooms in the house, the kitchen, the den, the bedroom. Almost always on days like this his eyes led to the bedroom.

On these days she'd push him back outside, and on one particularly cold day he found himself on the other side of the door, digging his hands in deep, walking down the sidewalk, through the gate, past the fence, and down the road.

He walked a long way that day, and the next, and the day after that. It was all confusing. Every step took him further from the house. He began to forget what it looked like; he wondered if he'd ever go back. He wondered if he ever wanted to. He tried a few other doors at a few other houses, but it was fall when the sky is gray and the wind is cold and his attempts at the doors were lackluster and haphazard. He didn't want inside anymore, didn't know if he could. Dinners, fireplaces, couches and TVs belonged to other people, but it was much like watching a movie of other people's lives. The screen always separated the two worlds.

He began to miss his own house. The grass had grown, the weeds had sprung up, windows had broken in the house and a couple storms had ripped through the neighborhood. He was carrying in his bag a few gifts from other houses--freely given, not stolen--and he decided to begin decorating his house with some of those. A chasm had widened between his house and others, and some of the bridges had broken, but one or two were still usable, and he crossed over on one of those, back down a road that had become cracked and uneven, to the gate of his own house. He pushed it open (it creaked and groaned on its rusty hinges). He walked up to the door, noticing the loose bannister and the peeling paint, the draft of the broken windows, and went inside to get to work.