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My childhood home is up on Airbnb and my sister and I are going to go "live there" for a weekend.
I should have saved this news as a punch line, but there it is. We're going home.
Our little house, still tucked among trees and within sight of a small gem of a pond, is now a country retreat. The owners, who bought the house from my parents in the 1980s, are able to live closer to their work at their busier times of year and have started offering the house to the overworked and overstressed for a few days of gentle down time. This is not about Airbnb, the unresolved debate on its pluses and minuses. It's about how cool it is to have this opportunity! And how strange to see our old home pictured on the website. The photos spring off the screen, so familiar: the peaked roof, the painted trim, the old horse and carriage barn. What you can't see: the creaking of frogs, the ringing song of birds and inevitably, the buzz of mosquitoes, the green smell of cut grass.
The dreams I've had about that house could fill a novel. Layers and years of memories, all the games we played, all the funny and sad and brilliant things. The time we "harvested" the roosters and they ran around with no heads. The time we had a seance and scared ourselves silly. The time snow storms stranded us for two weeks. The time we crept out on the roof to see the Northern Lights. All the times we skated and fished and rowed on the pond. Memories that last a lifetime.
So why do we need to go back? Most people we've told are sure we'll be disappointed.
It won't be the same, they say.
Okay, true. The house has changed. Gone are the markings of the 1970s, the patterned wallpaper, tufty carpets in odd shades and unfitted kitchen. The old cement and stone porch my dad built out back, under which every summer my brother's pet woodchuck dug a den, has been replaced by a sun room. The new owners have restored the whole house to a former glory, with polished wood floors and fresh white paint, which, although lovely, won't be familiar. And it seems certain ancient maple trees, trees we practically lived in, have finally fallen.
Will it be the same? No. But will it feel the same? The kitchen window still looks out on the pond and we'll sit there with coffee mugs in the morning the way my mother would have done. Do we need anything more?
It'll be full of ghosts, they say.
Yes, that's also true. That house has to be populated by ghosts, even if only the ghosts of our former selves, still sliding down the tall bannister, hiding in the coat closet waiting to be found, whispering from our bunk beds. I entered the house as a newborn and left it bound for university; myself as a child, an adolescent, a young adult impatient to get on with things, all wait there to greet me. But also: My sisters and brother, our cousins, aunts and uncles, friends and neighbours, every person who ever walked through that door for a visit, a Christmas dinner, a bridal shower, everyone who sat in the living room balancing a flowered tea cup and saucer on their knee, will have left some nebulous mark. My father and mother, now gone, in my mind still sit on folding lawn chairs after weeding the garden. Even our dog lies under the cedar tree, the beloved dusty pads of his feet sticking up from a hole dug to cool off after a long hot day.
Will we feel them with us, these ghosts? Will we spot them, half-seen through the scrim of time? Or will they decline the invitation?
They say you can't go back.
They're right. The past is a brightly painted country where we once lived, so real and vivid in memory, from which we are forever barred. My son is coming with me and no doubt we'll wear him out with our reminiscences, but I can never take him to see that lost country, a place where we spent whole days swimming, rode our bikes without helmets and our cars without seat belts, looked up things we wanted to know in books on the shelf, not on a computer or an iPhone. Just by stepping in the door, we'll bring the present with us; mirrors will remind us of how many years have gone by and we're told there is WiFi, although it seems some guests prefer to avoid learning the password in search of quieter, older pleasures.
The real question people are asking is this: Will we be disappointed to find ourselves still ourselves? Do we imagine we might be transformed, once more becoming those little girls? Will we long to jump off the rope swing or turn cartwheels in the grass? Will we revel in fond memories or miss those departed even more?
Will we wish we'd left the past alone?
Never mind, I still want to go. Future Airbnb review: We so enjoyed this quaint country home, which embraces the present while cherishing the memory of a former time. Don't be surprised if you're joined by benevolent ghosts. Oh, and although the antique setting will charm you, updated washrooms are a blessing.
J.E. Hewitt lives in Elora, Ont.