Summers in my Small Home

The day is hot and cloudy. A gray July day to sweat at home, while you wonder if the clouds will break and bring some sunshine to add to the humidity. This has been one of my least favourite summers so far, and I have had many. Summer is usually my favourite season.

This time of year evokes warm feelings in people. Togetherness, celebration, relaxation, and a general sort of excitement for adventure and fun. Kids run around together trying to make the best of their free time before they are hustled back into the controlled order of school. Families going on outings to the beach or camping, barbecuing either way likely. Everyone complaining it's too hot, while enjoying cold drinks, warm tans and open pools and lakes. There is a lot of music as well, the only other time so much music can be heard outside is Christmas, except it's less repetitive and little more religious.

Summer fun eludes me these days though. I guess you could say I aged out of it. I sit on a shady porch so I can enjoy the outdoors without setting my wrinkled skin ablaze, watching others having fun. It's a better alternative to being bored and alone in my small house, where I sit and play solitaire; debating with myself whether I should get up and turn on the noisy old air conditioner. Most of the time I decide not to.

These days I couldn't even afford my small house if I had to buy it. The house next door sold for $413, 000 beginning of last autumn, and our street isn't even that nice. It was my friend Paul Stanley's house. He told me he and the wife needed the money. The reality is their son and his wife needed the money, so they are moving in with him to help out. Now my friend is living three hours away, while I am alone grumbling at the noise of a company tearing apart his memories to make something slightly bigger, with three connected apartments. Third house they have done this to in my area.

I was 16 when I first moved into this house. It was a sunny summer day and my father moved my mom and I away from the city. Even back then my father was worried about urban influence on our lives, or more particularly mine. I can't blame him, I was a troublemaker. My principal had threatened to expel me more than once.

Now I was in a small neighborhood in the middle of nowhere. You had to take a 20 minute walk, just to get to a bus that could take you anywhere remotely interesting. Our house was much smaller than it had been in the city, that was the my second biggest grievance. My room now made my stuff seem cluttered and cramped. I didn't even bother unpacking most of it for the first three months. There was another room, but it belonged to my dad, because he still needed an office. He got to work in the city, but I was being forced to go to a rural school in the fall. At the time this was assumed to be my worst summer ever.

For three weeks I kicked a can back and forth down the road. There may have been some other activities I admit, but for this was the one I remember the best. A dented bean can with only half a label remaining. I didn't kick it around for fun, it was just constantly in my way as I walked the four streets that formed our neighbourhood. It was a stress reliever. All it took was for the can to be kicked back at me, and I forgot all about the darn thing.

It caught air and whipped by my right side, landing in a patch of yellow grass amidst a property of dirt. The kicker was about the same height as me (although I was a mite short), long sandy hair like the dirt, and wore worn out running shoes and an orangey-yellow dress. Her name was Veronica. She told me she had watched me kick that can by her house for the past week, and she was done being witness to my moody tantrum of solace, or something to that effect. She called me stupid and offered to spend time with me if I really was that bored. It was a much less awkward meeting of friendship years later when I met Paul.

We spent nearly everyday that summer together. Enough time that her father had to talk to my father about what would happen if I wasn't a proper gentleman. It was a bit of a joke, since we weren't even best friends, there just weren't enough teenagers to socialize with. She would read books to me and tell me the importance of what they said, while I pretended not to pay attention. I fixed a bicycle I found abandoned in a creek and taught her how to ride, which she picked up quickly enough that she may have been fibbing about not knowing how.

Sometimes she had a friend and a cousin visit her, and she would ignore me. They would chat in private and giggle sometimes, I will never know if it had anything to do with me. Other times she would include me, and we would have lunch together. The girls would ask me about the city and I'd tell them embellished stories of my rough boy antics. I don't think her cousin ever really liked me, but she was never upfront about it.

When school started again there was an immediate distance between us, even though there were only 97 students and we saw eachother at least once a day in passing. She was more into education than I was, but I attended regularly, or else I think my father would have forced me to pay rent. Veronica sent a tutor my way to help me with certain subjects, and occasionally she would pass along a message to me from Veronica. Otherwise we were strangers, until summer returned and brought us back together. I looked forward to it

It was three summers later when I asked Veronica to marry me and she turned me down, because she was accepted at a prestigious school. It was 2 summers after that when I was promoted to assistant in some garage I was working at. The next summer I met Paul and his first wife, and we talked about starting a bit of a repair shop of our own. Two more summers and we actually did it, to great success I might add. That same summer Veronica broke off an engagement and came home to live with her mom and we reconnected. The next summer we were married and I made the foolish mistake of buying the house next door from my father, who had been charging me rent.

Turns out my father wasn't the greatest neighbour to have and we fought over tedious stuff for six summers. Even two grandchildren didn't change his over critical opinions about the changes I should have implemented to my property, in comparison to his own. Sadly there was not a seventh summer as neighbours on account of him having suffered three consecutive heart attacks within a few weeks.

The crazy man left me his house. The house I started in. I had two houses side by side. I did the only thing that made sense to me at the time, I sold my house to Paul my business partner, and moved my family next door in the small house that user to belong to my father. My mother.....didn't want to stay, despite us having been willing to have her with us. She moved in with an aunt I had only met twice in my lifetime.

I had a total of four children grow up and move out to find lives of their own in the same house I had been forced to do the same in. The house is small but has a large history of my family, and the evidence is all over it. It was tight fit for many years and Veronica and I contemplated getting a bigger place several times, but never did.

Eleven summers ago my first grandchild was born. The first of many Five summers ago my youngest child moved out, having finally had enough of his parents company. We understood. Two summers ago, Veronica passed away peacefully in a hospital. This summer my small house feels too roomy.

The sun finally breaks through the clouds and its gotten to be the time for me to get inside and fix myself some supper. Before I can encourage my muscles to lift me out of my chair, I see a young man in a suit begins walking up my driveway. His friendly smile does not disarm me. His greeting and introduction does not make me feel more familiar. His lengthy pitch about the value of my house does not appease me. I mutter "no thank you" as my door slams in his face