Three Years In Driver

It’s coming up to the third anniversary of the time when I bought a house under the influence of vicodin. Halcyon days and all that. And finally, after all that time, the reasons why I don’t think I can ever love this house are crystalizing in my mind.

Mostly, it’s likely due to a quirk of my life back in the UK. Nobody else has lived in that house since it was built in 1978. Nobody. My parents moved in after it was built, and we have been there ever since. Which I know is atypical, but I think it’s formative.

Every part of 39 Avon Crescent is a memory we created. Every cupboard, every painted wall, even the newspaper lining under the carpet belongs to us. I can look at the ceiling in the kitchen and remember that the bump is where the kitchen used to end before the extension was put in. I know why there isn’t a door leading into the living room, and even now I know exactly what awaits me if I go under the stairs. Every part of it is ours. And even though I don’t live there any more, it takes me about 30 minutes to fall back into the way of things.

This is not something that the knotty pine kitchen does for me here in Durham. Nor the grass outside that just grows and laughs at me after it gets chopped back every two weeks.

The house is slowly changing. The furniture, the new rugs, the fancy new shower in the master bathroom. The way that we stripped the back room and turned it into a chocolate-making room. Posters on the walls for Helvetica and the Trellick Tower.

But it will never be my house.

Of course, working this out doesn’t really help me much. Answers on a postcard to the usual address: W12 7RJ.