The House
The house down the street wasn't a newer model. No - its roof sagged a bit in the middle, like a concerned parent's creased forehead. A couple of front windows were cracked, like broken reading glasses, obscuring the house's view of the rest of the street. The outside paint was peeling, ivy climbed the walls and slowly destroyed the brick, and weeds disintegrated the stonework of the walkway and patio. Indeed, the house was much like an old man, worn down from a long, hard life with ungrateful children who wanted nothing from him but their inheritance, waiting for him to finally die and leave everything behind. But those children would have to wait - the old man had found a new lease on life, a second wind, a reason to get up from his favourite chair again despite the fact that his wife had died, leaving him all alone.
The old house, abandoned for years, had been bought by a family of three - a single mother with a tired gait and a bright smile, toting along her two young children, both with dimpled smiles and excited laughter and easy-going attitudes. They brought new life to the old house, fixing the roof, getting new windows and doors, repairing the patio, replacing the stones in the walkway, chipping, sand-blasting, and repainting the outer walls, and working miracles on the interior. They brought new life to the run-down building, a certain light that only came with cluttered bedrooms and framed photos of friends and family that littered the walls, filling the place with still-frame smiles and tiny peeks into the world beyond the windows.
The interior went from browns and beiges to yellows, reds, oranges, blues, and greens. An entire wall was devoted to finger-paintings by the kids, to be completed with great reverence when the family settled in. The kitchen was completely refreshed, shiny appliances glittering in anticipation for their new tenants. Landscapers were hired to dig up the dried-out earth, replace it with fresh, nutritious, soggy dirt that would grow green new grass, replacing the scraggly, yellow stalks of old. A garden was placed, some basic flowers planted, soon joined by those selected by the family of three, bring a rainbow-hued collection of plants to the front of the house. The whole place seemed to exude life now, whereas it had once seemed to suck all hope and vitality from its surroundings. The fence was replaced with a high wooden one, dark-stained wood that gave privacy and safety to the house's occupants.
And one day, a car finally made the redone driveway its throne, a dirt-streaked navy four-door sedan with stickers covering the back windows that brought with it two gloriously innocent children, naive and wondrous in their potential for life, to bring happiness to a once dead place. It brought also a hardworking mother, with her work and her suits and her clacking high heels that echoed throughout the entire house, declaring their owner gone for work or home for the day. A cat prowled the street and watched the other houses, resembling more a hawk than a feline. It stood guard over the children of the home, watching the interactions with the welcoming, cheery neighbours, who had been given hope by the sudden transformation of the house. A dog kept safe the enclosed yards, warning away those who would harm the newly christened home. And the two children, ever happy and ever hopeful, brought life to the painted-over old man of a building, still old but with new clothes, new glasses, and a new philosophy.
Live while you still have life left.