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Location: Home.
Listening: True Lies.

Lazing once more on a Sunday evening, and, having just finished reading Peter's latest entry, decided that I wanted to write a little bit about a somewhat similar situation going on in my life.

My father has spent the last nineteen months building what is, ostensibly, he and my mother's "dream home". During my brother's second year of college, about three years ago, they purchased a lot on a new development in Collierville, just outside of Germantown. The development was going up around one of the more exclusive local golf courses in the area and, as my father is an almost obsessive golfer, and my mother loved the land, it seemed perfect. My mother found a floor plan that she liked in a newspaper, my father sat down at his drafting board and, nineteen months later, they're scheduled to move in this coming Friday, my birthday.

I saw the house for the first time when I went home for Christmas in 2000. It was still largely in frame at that point, but, walking through the plywood and drywall, I was able to get a good idea of the eventual shape and feel of it. As we rambled through the skeleton in the thirty-five degree afternoon chill, my father pointed out the delineation of the rooms, where the fireplaces would be located, and how he had manipulated the exposures for optimum lighting and temperature distribution. My mother filled me in on the rest of what she considered to be the crucial details--the three-car garage (although they currently have only two, one is reserved for guests); the tile pattern she had selected for the island and backsplashes in the kitchen; and that the house itself is 8,500 sq. ft. "under roof", but only 7,000 of that is air-conditioned and heated and, therefore, "liveable".

When we went upstairs, carefully navigating the spiral staircase without rails, I perked up. The spaces upstairs were lovely-- arched ceilings, large windows with wide views of the trees and the lake across the narrow street, rooms that were spacious, but not too big to lose all sense of coziness or personality. I walked to the back of the house and found an area with windows on two sides and a lake view. I turned to my parents. "This is beautiful. What is it going to be? A study?"

My mother looked at me blankly and then laughed. "A study? This is storage."

I blinked. "Storage?" Not with that ceiling and that view.

She laughed again, still looking at me as if I were insane. "Yes. This entire area back here is going to be used for storage. The bedrooms are in the front of the house."

"The ones with the flat ceilings?" The rooms where they had cut off the high arches with beams.

"Yes." Her tone of voice was matter-of-fact. "What did you think? We can't have bedrooms back here--this is the area without heat."

I looked at my father. "You could put a library back here--put in the glass-front cabinets..."

He looked thoughtful, but my mother chimed in. "We're not putting anything back here."

I looked at him again. "A library."

He shrugged. My mother put her hands on her hips. "You're being ridiculous. What would we do with a library? If we read a book, we put it on our bedside table. Besides, the cabinets go in the dining room, to display the china."

After that, I followed them downstairs, and out the back door into the mud and ice of what would be the garden. I looked up at the massive frame and had the sudden realization that this would be my home--the place I would return to when I next came to Memphis. It felt very, very strange.

My father sent me pictures of the house again this Christmas, just after the first snow. He included in his email a few notes about the brickwork and what the landscaping would eventually look like, but I was too overwhelmed by the foreign-ness of the structure in the pictures to really pay much attention.

As I looked through the pictures, I kept repeating to myself "This is home"--but it just wouldn't take. I felt like I was looking at a picture in a book or magazine of a building that vaguely interested me aesthetically, but with which I had simply no connection.

The house that I grew up, in another neighborhood in Germantown, is much smaller than this one--about 3,500 sq. ft.--and 1.5 stories, with the upper floor being entirely attic. We had fairly large front and back yards, patio, no pool (though my brother and I begged our parents for one for years, they refused), and plenty of trees. We had woods within half a block that were my favorite playground and thinking spot up until high school, and railroad tracks that would occasionally bring wanderers to our door in the middle of the night, asking for change or a little food. My childhood was very stereotypically suburban--riding my bike around the neighborhood, playing "Thundercats" with the other kids in backyards, venturing into the woods and building forts from tree limbs and vines. We'd catch fireflies at night in warm weather and I'd go for day-long walks with just a pack full of books and a sandwich. Everything was a possibility. Everything was safe. Everything was familiar. I think that's the primary issue that I have with this new house. It and its surroundings are completely unfamiliar. The neighborhood is a gated community, of sorts, patrolled by a private security force, and populated with other large houses that, while architecturally different, seem somehow utterly homogeneous. When I visited, we drove through the neighborhood, that radiates out around the course clubhouse. There was no evidence of children anywhere--no bikes or big wheels in driveways, no snowmen, not even many Christmas lights. Trees were sparse and, although many of the homes were newly constructed, I had the feeling that they would remain so, so as not to obstruct golf games. Everything was very pretty, very upscale, and very sterile. It was hard to imagine doing the things I did as a child in that environment--and it was hard to imagine that environment ever being what I would call "my home". To be fair, the house is really no longer mine--it's my parents'. They built it, and they'll be the primary residents. They chose this environment because it's what they wanted--and my opinion on the matter really should mean little. I recognize this, but, when my mother mentions that I don't seem very excited about the move, it's hard to know what to tell her.