Without family a house is not a home

I spent the better part of last week with our best friends and their girls, whom I adore above all other children.  I am closer to these girls than any other kids I know, nephews and nieces included.  These people are more than friends.  They’re family.  I’d take a bullet or step in front of a train for any of them.

As always, had a fabulous time with them.  With them I get to experience all things “family with kids”.  Teen histrionics.  The highs and lows of boyfriends and girl squabbles.  School awards.  The girls eye rolling at our adult uncoolness.  Me staying abreast of and eye rolling over the latest cool trends.  All things I’d love to experience with my own kids. (And yes…..I know that there’s a lot more to parenting than this.)   And sometimes it’s hard to sit by and watch and listen to the family dynamic at work, knowing the only way I’ll ever get to experience it is by observation.  But it’s fun while it’s happening and I spend a great deal of time laughing.

Eventually though, I have to leave…..and go home.  And common sense says that getting away from the reminder of what I really want the most but cannot have should make it easier.

It doesn’t.

It is when I get home that reality and the hand I’ve been dealt is the hardest to take.  When I leave their real home and come back to my pretend one.  The realisation sets in again:  they have a family home.  I have a house.

An empty, silent house.

The closer I get to my house, the more my heart hurts.  Heading down the driveway, it is evident a family does not live there.  No bikes or scooters litter the driveway.  No netball hoop or swing set stands in the garden.  There’s no cubby house or sandpit.  No backpacks and a scrambled pile of kids shoes sitting inside the backdoor.  No school notices or report cards on the fridge.  No permission slips on the bench to be signed.  No hats and jumpers slung over a chair.  No school clothes to be brought in off the line and hung up.  No lunch boxes to be packed or thermoses to be washed.  No toys scattered here and there.  Just the bits and pieces of a childless man and a woman.

There’s not much in the way of sound here either.  No laughing, squawking, or sibling bickering.  No one calling out for mum or dad.  No queries as to where this or that is….where did you last see it….I don’t know, I just can’t find it!  No children’s shows on the tele……no horrible music on the radio from the latest teen singing sensations.  I’m not threatening to gather up all the scattered toys and donate them to Vinnie’s if they don’t pick them up and put them away……

The house is just empty.  And not just of furnishings.  It won’t matter how much stuff I fill it with.  It won’t matter if I pay thousands and thousands for furnishings and décor, and it looks like something out of Home & Garden, or if I scrounge things from op shops and it looks very Frugal Uni Student Chic.  If every room of the house was wall to wall with stuff, top or bottom dollar, it would still be empty and echoing.  It would still lack life.  I want to get rid of this place.  I don’t want to reside here anymore.  It holds nothing but bad memories and the spectors of dead dreams.

My heart breaks at the sight of it….sitting high on the hill….a giant monument to the death of dreams I once had.  We built this house with a family in mind.  It’s huge.  Open planned.  Plenty of space for little ones to run around and grow up in.  Plenty of space for a family.  I chose it and once loved it because of those features.  Now I hate it.  I hate this house.  I hate it’s hugeness and it’s open planned living space.  It’s too big for just the two of us and it will never be a home.  I hate that there is nothing running around in all this space but two hairball-puking, fur-shedding cats.  That’s not quite the pitter-patter of little feet I had in mind.  It’s not the family I envisioned.

But it’s the only one I’m going to get.