Some reflections on change, renewal, and transformation after watching a short video of the demolition of the house I grew up in. We think of our buildings as permanent, as much as we think of ourselves as permanent, but things change.
The House I Grew Up In
“I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more–the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort–to death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires–and expires, too soon–too soon before life itself.”
Joseph Conrad in Youth, A Narrative
My brother sent me a video of part of the demolition of the house we grew up in. After my mother passed away last year, we put the house on the market, and the people who purchased it decided to demolish it and build a new house on the lot. Watching the video put me in a reflective mood.
A friend grew up on a farm outside of Pittsburgh. He went home for a 50th college reunion and was surprised that subdivisions had replaced his old neighborhood. He said it was the same sensation that family he knew that lived in Santa Rosa related: they returned home after the major fires last fall that burned down about a quarter of the city, and there was nothing to recognize of their neighborhood, much less their house.
His story reminded me of the original Sim City simulation game. In the course of an hour, the game allows you to direct 50-100 years in the evolution of a city. I found it fascinating and it fundamentally changed the way I looked at the built environment. I can remember watching time-lapse photography of buildings being constructed and plants sprouting, flowering, and withering, but this was an entire system where different parts were waxing and waning at the same time.
My parents lived in an apartment when I was born; they purchased a house when I was about two, and my father set about remodeling it before my mother and I moved in. My mother and I stayed with her family for about nine months. I remember visiting the new house and my father greeting us at the door, holding a hammer with a red kitchen town wrapped around his head like a bandanna to keep the sweat out of his eyes. I remember thinking that was just wrong, the wrong way to use a towel, and I have carried the image in my mind for many years.
The house I grew up in was built in the early 1900s and lasted more than a century. There was an old cistern that we filled with rock and an old outhouse that was torn down at some point. We tore down an old garage that had become termite-ridden but left the slab as a patio we used for many years before replacing it with a chat gravel driveway and a two-car turnaround.
My father continued to remodel and expand the house in various ways during my youth: walls were moved, the kitchen sink was moved, a central island was added, new floors, a “new side” added that doubled the size of the house and required that the stairways be re-arranged. I watched all of these changes as I grew up. I remember waking up one morning and realizing that the stairway was now in a different place. A makeshift fence guarded the 8-foot drop where the old stairway had stood for six decades.
A Tenant Moves On
“I can remember how when I was young I believed death to be a phenomenon of the body; now I know it to be merely a function of the mind and that of the minds of the ones who suffer the bereavement. The nihilists say it is the end; the fundamentalists, the beginning; when in reality it is no more than a single tenant or family moving out of a tenement or a town.”
William Faulkner in “As I Lay Dying“
When my grandfather passed away, and a new family moved into his house, it was a stranger sensation than watching this demolition.
When I was 11, I developed a lasting interest in photography. My father and I remodeled a part of the “old side” basement to add a darkroom with a new sink and cabinets. We found it expedient to hang some old blankets to create the “airlock” to keep light from the ‘new side” windows spoiling our prints.
Going Home Again
Some mornings, when I awake and have not opened my eyes, I sometimes think I am back in my bed there. Not so often these days, but when I was younger, it might happen once or twice a year.
I remember a man came to the house I grew up in when I was perhaps 12: he said he had grown up there and asked if he could walk through. My father was happy to show him around. At that point, the house had doubled in size due to all of the remodeling that had been done.
In some ways, it was probably more disorienting for him to walk through his transformed home than for me to watch my home getting torn down. We think of buildings as permanent–once we are adults, we think of ourselves as permanent–but the reality is that things change.
We are young
Wandering the face of the Earth
Wondering what our dreams might be worth
Learning that we’re only immortal
For a limited time
Rush in Dreamline