Went to a nearby bar the other night to watch a few innings of the Phillies. Double header against the White Sox. The bar was mostly empty, which is the way I like it.
It was trivia night. The categories were music, TV shows, and movies from the last several decades. I don’t usually play but I do pay attention to the questions. I might be able to hold my own in music but definitely not the other two. Since we were homeschooled growing up, there is an empty space in my head where that information would normally be for other people.
Earlier that day I went on this walk around town with my brother. The route we took ended up bringing us by the house of an old friend of mine growing up. Over the last several months, the house had been vacated and sold. It looked like it was purchased by a flipper. Dumpsters appeared, were filled, then hauled away. We noticed that the UNDER CONTRACT sign had been replaced by a SOLD sign.
As we were walking by a woman walking towards the house started talking to us and we struck up a conversation. She turned out to be the realtor who sold it. She asked us if we wanted to walk through and check it out after I mentioned I’d been in there hundreds of times. I was surprised at her offer but excited to get one last look and eagerly agreed.
It felt strange being in there, walking around. Everything was simultaneously recognizable and different. Walls, bedrooms, bathrooms; all of it familiar yet foreign.
I was now seeing things that were no longer there.
The desk off to the side that used to have the computer. It was the first place I remember seeing porn. This one kid who used to come by and hang out was always pulling up videos and telling us “yo look at this!” That computer was also one of the first places I remember interacting with the internet. We would go on YouTube and watch these videos from Tourettes Guy. And the try-not-to-laugh-while-watching-this videos, along with flip phone footage of street fights. I secretly made a MySpace around this time and was able to log in to check it when I came over.
It is borderline surreal being in a house full of the specters of past events. I could watch moments from years ago replay themselves like short videos in every direction I looked. Each floor and room was immediately nostalgic. Posters on walls, the creak of certain floorboards on the stairs, even places on the wall where I knew specific scratches should be. All of it gone.
And where was everyone I knew?
When we got to the top floor I was fully expecting the smell of scented candles and Marlboro Lights to hit me and was surprised when it didn’t. I looked for the tapestries of wolves hanging on the walls and the ornate knives to accompany them. I checked for the sound of Kid Rock blasting from the computer speakers, the smell of a freshly cracked Natty Ice, and the Flyers memorabilia. Absent.
I looked down from the window and saw the small parking area we used to skate in. Thought about all the times I had been there. All the meals I had and the snacks from on top of the fridge. All the holidays, Halo, and New Year’s Eve parties. Treated more like a son than a friend of the family.
A feeling of saudade swept me off my feet and carried me through a highlight reel of moments, like the kindly caretaker of a cemetery showing you around to the graves of memories so vivid it was hard to acknowledge them as past tense.
A car pulled up while we were walking around and by the time we got downstairs, we were greeted by the realtor and the new owner of the house. He was a nice guy with a family and we all talked for a few minutes about the town and the house. A few more thoughts related to my memories of the house passed through my mind but it felt out of place to mention them. It wouldn’t mean anything to the new owner and it took me a moment to realize that.
After saying our goodbyes, we headed back outside into the early afternoon sunlight. I now know what my parents experience when looking at the homes of people they knew growing up and seeing other people in them now. You watch how an area changes over time and if you look closely, you can see yourself changing with it. My body and mind filled with an unexpected lightness and even though I’ll still walk past this house again, that final walk through felt like the bookend of a series of special memories and a salute to the past that doubled as a gesture of gratitude and an acknowledgement of life.