Everybody wants to have a home

I looked out my office window, and there it was in a backyard across the street: a magnificent tree house. It has been built around the trunk of a large, leafy tree, and has a front porch.

On closer inspection I saw a rope on a pulley. I am not sure if it was made to support the weight of children who might want to swing from it, but there was a bucket nearby. I could imagine peanut butter sandwiches being lifted to hungry children. When I peered over the fence, there was a very excited boy showing the place off to someone I could not see.

I thought back to Pat Wilson’s playhouse. She was a friend of my sister from the time Beth was about 4, and lived a half block from us. In her backyard was a tiny house with brown, wood siding, windows with white trim, and a real door. I have a snapshot of the two girls standing by the house holding hands. I might have taken that photo myself with my Girl Scout camera.

Recently, a friend of mine helped an elderly man build a cabin on his property. His regular house is little more than a cottage, but nevermind. He had longed for a cabin for decades. Now his dream is becoming a reality thanks to some younger friends with strong backs and building skills. It has a front porch, two doors, a metal roof, lots of windows and a sleeping loft. It will be heated by a wood stove. It has no electricity or plumbing, but that was never the point. If he needs those things, he can have them by walking 15 minutes to his house.

What is it in us that longs for a dwelling of our own? Even as children we will make a house out of a cardboard box or throw a bedspread over a card table. One summer when I was maybe 12, my father left two sawhorses in the backyard. I spaced them just so, and strung a blanket over them to make a tent. 

Children’s writers and illustrators produce stories about rabbits that hang gingham curtains at their windows and eat at tables with ladderback chairs in charming little dwellings with fireplaces. We even like to imagine animals living in houses.

Much has been written about the real estate bubble and all that went wrong with subprime mortgages. Greed, incompetence and fraud all played a role, but if ever there was an industry made for the exploitation of dreams, it is housing. I think there must be a kid in most of us like the one I saw showing off his new tree house and thinking this is the coolest plaything he will ever have. In an America of foreclosures, this boy has his own house.

When I read about homelessness, the articles tend to focus on the physical problems of not having a roof over your head, but I think that isn’t even the half of it. Something in us longs for a home. Playhouses, tree houses, and cabins all make people happy. 

One could chalk it up to Americans’ wretched excess, but I don’t think that is it. I suspect that just as we need food and love, we need a place to call our own. Our minds and hearts need it as much as our bodies. We don’t necessarily have to hold title to it, but it needs to be “ours” nonetheless. 

After my sister died, her childhood friend Pat wanted a copy of the snapshot of the two of them standing in front of her playhouse. I had one made and sent it to her and thought a lot about joys and agonies that lay ahead of those two little girls holding hands. Their lives took off in dramatically different directions, but they never lost touch entirely. I guess it is hard to forget someone when you have shared a house.