The Blue House with the Red Door

I stand in the kitchen with the blue walls in the blue house with the red door. A coffee maker sits on a table covered in dust from years of disuse. Next to it, there is a vase that stands tall with no flowers and handles that have been bent too far on the sides. The words “Farmers Market” are old and faded. The sink drips with a leak that can never be fixed and knobs that have rusted at the base. The counter above is filled with childhood memorabilia—forgotten. I can see all of the mornings, afternoons, and evenings my mother spent by this counter, scrubbing endless dishes in this kitchen with the blue walls in this blue house with the red door. I can see the days she spent scraping at the surface of the stove. I can still smell the incense that was left to burn to the hilt—forgotten. Mats sit cracked at the base of the stove. They have a print of sunflowers, my mother’s favorite. The material is cracked and old, too special to be discarded without a second thought, too special to be put to rest even after all their years of good use. It reminds me of my family’s country home. These houses share so many similarities: the kitchen windows where the sun hits just right in the morning, the fresh smell of grass after a long rain mixed in with the smell of soaked wood, the kitchen sink where my mother and grandmother stand and clean day after day as their children would play outside. Life is simple. Life is mundane. Life stands still.

I dream of a city where everything moves too fast. I dream of an apartment that sits above the bustling streets where people rush off to their next destination. I do not dream of the nights that buzzed too loudly with crickets and cicadas and the snails that come out in the rain. I do not dream of growing into my neighbors who sit and wait for life to happen until it passes them by. I do not dream of moving slowly and gracefully as the days pass with the same ending. I want to run and fight and fall. I want to guess wrong and make mistakes. I do not want to be like my mother, who every day cleans dishes in the kitchen with the blue walls in the blue house with the red door, the faded blue house with the faded red door. This house stands strong and stands forgotten. This house is never changing, this house that has seen me wither away into a slow life, this house that has seen me become my mother. This house waits for me to watch my children play in the front yard as I put sunflowers into the vase because they were my mother’s favorite. This house has seen all I could have been and all that I did not do. My mother says, “A home knows when it is not lived in,” but I wonder if a home knows when a person has not lived. Will I disappear on one of these summer nights? Will I fade away with the fall of the autumn leaves? Will I one day move slowly and gracefully to my porch chair, where I sit and wait for life to happen? Will I lose my fire like the burners that click for too long before they ignite? Will I creak like the oven that is never used? Will I slowly lose my structure and support like my family’s country home, where the walls and floors have now begun to sink? Will I find myself fading away like my mother’s home, where she spent all her time in the kitchen with the blue walls in the blue house with the red door as her children played outside in this easy life, where life seemed to stand still?