Last weekend I went to my parents’ house to pack, sort, and remove what’s still left of our family’s 47 years there. I had color film in my Rollei and time to use it. Here are a few of the images I made there (including one from the road). I continue to be grateful for this chance to make meaning out of loss as a long, long chapter in my life comes to a close.

As I drove down Route 11 through Stuarts Draft, Virginia, I passed this house being moved from its original moorings. I was transfixed and had to turn around, go back, get out, and take its picture. It looks as though it’s defying gravity. Wish I’d found out where it was going.

The porch addition on my parents’ house has windows that reflect other windows. I wanted to take one last self-portrait there.

We moved to this house when I was seven and my youngest sibling was one year old. All four of us were elated that we would have this little playhouse–at the time it seemed huge, and it featured burlap-strap built-in bunkbeds and wooden shutters on the windows that let us completely shut ourselves inside. Here we played house, pretended to cook (old pots and pans full of acorns, as I recall), told ghost stories, had fourth of July cookouts over fires we built by hand, and–rarely–slept overnight, braving the bugs and spooky night sounds of deepest, darkest suburbia.

By the time we outgrew the playhouse, my parents had begun to nurture a succession of neurotic little Shelties, and this became their doghouse. But the playhouse for me always remained a powerful symbol of home, a tiny house I imagined owning all to myself, and the iconic shape and color of my dream house. I’m now considering painting my grown-up house barn red.

As I stood in the side yard with my camera (and my puppy), I looked back and realized that our house, like the old place in Stuarts Draft, appeared to be lifting off into the spring treetops. It’s always looked a bit like a boat to me, and I imagine the house sailing forward with a new crew on board. Here’s hoping that it means as much to its next family as it has to the Moores. Bon voyage.

Advertisement