When I'm home

The building we live in is old. Prewar they say, although there have been many wars since then.

I think of what my building must have looked like when it was new, of the people who lived here, the first tenants. I wonder what events have unfolded within these walls, what dramas and joys. I realize that I really feel this is "MY" building.

It's a creaky block of bricks, full of ghosts and shadows. I sense them sometimes; the shadows move around me and I see them, but don't see them. We once talked about how we both had a sense of something around us that we couldn't quite see. It had been happening for months but neither of us had mentioned it before then, for fear of sounding mental.

An old building has its charms, but also its foibles. It's like a marriage partner that you are very comfortable and in love with, but who sometimes frustrates you. Sometimes when I walk past the shiny new condos going up in my neighborhood I feel pangs of lustful envy. So new and modern and glitzy.

But then I feel guilty and rush home to silently apologize to my old beast. It's through no fault of its own, after all, that the floors creak and the water pipes are rusty. We're all aging in the same way, aren't we? I don't want anyone to give up on me when I get old just because things don't work the way they used to or because I haven't been able to keep up with modern technology.