For Sale_ This Old House

[Van Canna]

Al Ford in our dreams

Last night, in the dream, George and me we were walking somewhere in a run down section of Boston.

George said: well, it is here we must go_

So up the steps of a broken down building we went.

We pushed the front door open, and our good friend, Al Ford, was there greeting us.

He looked mid forties, very strong, very muscular and lean.

We hugged and laughed and drank tea...but then there was this feeling of sadness.

~~

Al Ford was friendship and loyalty personified ...even as he went through his moments of confusion of life...as we probably all did.

He meant more to me than I can even explain.

And we got closer during his last few years of his life.

You might remember another dream I had of Al _ at Summer camp.

He approached me in the dining room ...smiling and said " Van ...you really should eat these peanut butter and jelly sandwiches....they are delicious and good for you "

And in sadness...he would talk to me about being a cancer survivor...not knowing that terrible enemy was ensconced in wait...for the final blow.

[Van Canna]

https://theinterviewwithgod.com/video/

[Van Canna]

[Van Canna]

So it was in my old ancestral house, the voices of all of us, with our happy moments and with the sad ones, with the echo of our walking steps, with the variance of sun rays thru the windows, with its merging with me, more than the body, mostly with my growing soul.

In my dreams of leaving in exploration of the callings of my life, I was to return time and again and the joy of finding it unaffected by time, was mainly for being able to sleep soundly in my good bed and in my beloved bedroom.

In the month of October, one distant time while away overseas, I dreamed I had returned to my old house seeking refuge from inexorable sadness, only to find it encircled by a wall without a way to walk thru it, and for me to get to the front door of the house, I had to climb the wall.

But the door was sealed shut and my parents had run away. To enter, I had to penetrate into my adjacent garden, climb the back wall and break thru one of the back windows facing the railroad. I was then inside those old beautiful, large rooms, now lugubrious and deserted.

In the kitchen I found the dining table still set for a last meal before my parents had taken off, with the dishes lined up with so much care and precision.

I remember wishing that at the soonest all would return to the original happy times of my memories, and as before I would see the table so beautifully set up by my mother, full of delicious food she was so good at cooking…the house would reopen and my parents would be back to continue to live their lives there.

I remember after the end of world war two, that epoch was the pinnacle of happiness of their lives. All of us safe from any danger, all the furniture and possessions intact, that old house had become a future of peace and incredible happiness.

[Van Canna]

When returning from trips, my steps from the railroad station would fly on the sidewalks as I headed to my front door. I would ring the bell continuously to signal my arrival, and upon entering the corridor I would find my mother running to me for an embrace.

When I left to spend some months with my aunt at her mountain house for health reasons, my mother had wanted to light up a candle before an image of our Lady next to the kitchen door for my protection. That candle was lit for all the time I was away, and at my return it was put out with joy.

But in our old house lived in us, other than its space and our habits, also the noises and resonances of life outside. The almost constant murmur of train traffic from the station to the back of the house, at night was conducive to a deep sleep like a lullaby.

The sound of church bells fixed the hours, the shouts of ambulant sellers and of mothers calling the children home for dinner was such a musical treat.

[Van Canna]

From my bedroom you could hear the girl living across the way…sing melodiously while cleaning up in the morning, and you could see ghostly shadows of people drifting across the ceiling.

My father had wanted to replace the old doorbell with an electric one and its sharp ring at a brief touch would signal all the visits, from delivery people to the multitude of friends we had in those days.

The door of every room and the window shutters, when closing them, had a distinctive individual squeak that ingrained in each one of us so we could tell what portion of the house was active.

[Van Canna]

Then a strange sound…it was like all the floors and walls of the house were contracting at once to produce that intense, long squeal that was becoming louder and louder.

I suddenly came to the realization that the sound had become a voice, raucous and vigorous, it was the voice of the house like a voice of a person with an urgent communication.

The voice was now saying that I would become the new owner, because for so many years it had not had one, telling me of its terrible solitude, and of so many times it had looked for help by loudly calling out, and of me being the only person aimed to hear its desperate screams.

And so it pronounced me as the new legal owner, someone who would keep it company, finally, breaking the solitude.

But I answered saying that now I already had a house , and that I was doing very well in it...I could not just leave it.

The voice now sounded angry, ordering me to forget all that I had; or I would never see my old house and, my parents, or my friends, ever again.

I cried once more, and began to kick doors and punch window shutters in anger. A puppet came out of my old toys room and counseled me to remain calm because the house did not want to hurt me, rather ... it loved me and wished me well. But I was scared, wanted to get out and back to my family. I was beginning to feel like a prisoner.

[Van Canna]

I knew I had to get out as quickly as I could. There was a confusing sound from the ‘voice’ of the house…a crying lament.

I bolted down the stairs to the front door that now was slowly closing…I jumped from the third step down and slinked out just in time before the huge door shut with a bang. I made it, I was out and running.

Having reached a safe distance away, I stopped and turned around for one last look. It was still so beautiful and lovely…my old house where I was born and spent so many wondrous years growing up with my parents and a multitude of friends. And all those times spent in my beautiful Toys room…but inside now this old house was crying desperately.

Looking out of one nailed shut window, I could see the puppets from my toys room grouping together and stare at me with a sad look.

I thought of them also, as the house, suffering from a tremendous solitude.
I yelled out to them to not worry, that someday I would be back to take them away with me.

[Van Canna]

And then the dream.

I had again gone back…I had run from the train station to the old house fearing it might have disappeared…no…still there, but dark and disconsolate, its façade holding a frown…front door closed but not locked…a shove…and I enter the old beloved corridor…what darkness, what stale suffocating air…I open the big window to the right overlooking the garden and the railroad station.

And as I swing open the shutters the day that I left comes to mind. It was a hot Summer morning, Nunziatina, our house keeper, after having kissed me and wished me a safe trip, had turned around as to close that window one last time, but it was so she could hide her crying …poor Nunziatina…maybe a secret voice in that instant was telling her that she would never see me again.

[Van Canna]

The vestibule at the head of the corridor begins to dissipate my fears, I stop for a moment undecided…do I first visit the rooms or go down to the garden and then the rooms?

The vestibule is the same, the walls painted in grey and floral patterns, a marble top console against the wall, even the same old green porcelain lamp and the picture on the wall of Theseus and Ariadne… in Greek mythology, daughter of Pasiphae and the Cretan king Minos. ...

She had fallen in love with the Athenian hero Theseus and, with a thread of glittering jewels, helped him escape the Labyrinth after he slew the Minotaur, a beast half bull and half man that Minos kept in the Labyrinth.

As a child I feared that vestibule at night that would fall into darkness as soon as the sun went down. I was afraid of traversing it alone, because a few times I seemed to have seen phantoms wearing capes.

That fear had vanished once I started carrying a toy lever action rifle.

[Van Canna]

loved my garden with the wall separating it from the railway station. There were
indentations into the wall put there by my ancestors so as easily climb the wall and drop into the railways to cavort in freight cars in storage on the rails closest to the wall.

Oh, the delicious hours spent in our garden, playing with my friends always stopping by that great house, making up a thousand projects for the future when we would reach adulthood, fantasying in the shadows of the nut tree, eyes submerged into the serene blue sky while glancing to the mountains extending before and above us, dormant in the golden silence of the warm afternoons, with our hearts full of affection, and infinite dreams full of smiles and hopes, our souls inebriated with the promise of diamond crusted future.

And one hundred memories, one hundred regrets, that force me to sit there, my head in my hands, where in days past of my youth I would sit singing about joy and hope, looking at life with a smile on my face, a life that will be a happy one only if envy, ignorance, slander and hypocrisy would not exist.

[Van Canna]

Oh, here is my beloved dining room adjacent to our lovely old kitchen...the two tall Gothic windows overlooking the garden are on the outside framed in green vine leaves that kiss the window sill throwing a delicious, cool penumbra into the room.

In between the windows was the old piano that my beautiful mother would play and sing love songs at random times of the day.

Opposite the piano a tall dish storage cabinet next to a marble top credenza. In the angle just outside the kitchen door, a round small table my mother would use to cut out the food before serving it.

Now there is nothing left in the dining room, not a stick of furniture, not a fold of window drapery; but I see in my mind's eye all the things, objects I knew so well, the silverware I had always taken much care of in polishing to a glimmer.

And in between those furnishings, around the dining table full of delicious food, family members and visiting friends, the logs crackling in the fireplace in the long winter evenings, because our dining room also served as a family day room. In the hot days of summer when thru the lowered window drapes a sweet greenish light would penetrate, and in that soft summer light all sparkles and silence, and of those enchanted nights, until the scent of the garden would reach us mixed with the sweet odor of the puffing, smoking locomotives from the station.

In the evening I often would rest my arms on the window sill, listening to the sound of crickets, bringing to mind all the people dear to me, the friends and family who encircled me then, who would come to the house, loving each other, in the happiness, and modesty of a family that did not ask the good Lord anything but the gift of prolonging that tranquil happiness...but God does not always listen.

My beautiful mother died young after a life full of hardships.

Now the house belongs to others, even if it were mine again, How could I live there assailed by those haunting remembrances?

[paulg]

Those lovely memories are worth more than gold. You are so lucky to have lived them.

[Van Canna]

Thank you Paul. those were indeed magical years, and now a 'great escape' for me from the miseries of today's life.

Thank you for taking the time to read.

[Van Canna]

Even the big bedroom of my parents is deserted, dark, somber and vacant.
The large steel bed, so rich, so elegant, with embroidered silk blankets, sheets and pillows...all has vanished.

Gone is the ebony makeup vanity table of inlaid with white wood, gone are the large drawers where in front of them, putting away clean linen, perfumed with odorous leaves spread on top...my mother would busy at lenght to neatly store all items. Vanished is the couch with the tall back, the mirror with the rich frame.

Vanished are the window shaved percale drapes with Chinese figurines...

I loved to spend hours before that window sill, to study and do homework after school, where in summer sunsets my eyes would fix on a sky of violets and emeralds, in a great view outside of the streets and of houses adjacent, fantasying as usual ...the soul cradled by the melancholic music of an accordion a neighbor eternally played as soon as he would see the first shadows of the night fan out upon the sky.