Making up Stories

We have lived in our house a few years now. We see people come and go. They all have their stories to tell, no doubt, but mostly we can only guess. There are young families, maybe a young couple who move in with great enthusiasm, helped by family and friends. They work hard on their property: a new coat of gleaming white paint on the front door, a few plants in a pot, carefully tended and very neat, all the blooms regularly dead-headed to make room for fresh flowers.

A baby is born and we watch proud grandparents come and go and all kinds of paraphernalia begin to clutter up their lives and their hallway - a large buggy complete with a plastic rain shield for wet days and a parasol for sunny ones. Time passes by and the buggy disappears, to be replaced by a little tricycle, then the little girl's first bicycle, all pink and girlie with a little pink basket on the front and a noisy bell. Signs begin to appear of a new addition to the family and suddenly, without waiting for us to find out whether it's a new brother or a little sister, they are off, belongings on the pavement, just like when they arrived. In no time at all everything is neatly stowed away in the removal van, the cleaning is finished to their satisfaction, ready for the new tenants, and they are locking the door, fastening their little girl into her car seat and gone from our lives forever.

We have seen other departures too, some less positive. An elderly couple, living opposite, lived out their lives in front of our eyes for a while. We watched as they crossed the line from healthy, active lives to frail old age. At first there were weekly trips by bike to the market, coming home with bicycle panniers laden with fresh fruit and vegetables and a bunch of chrysanthemums or roses for the table. We waved and smiled from our window or sometimes exchanged a few words in the street.

Later on the man grew weak and no longer accompanied his wife to market. She cycled home alone, muffled up against the cold wind with a thick scarf and hat, and trudged up the stairs to their upstairs flat with her bags of shopping. When spring came the elderly gentleman reappeared and took a turn around the local park, admiring the spring bulbs and feeling the warm sun on his back, whilst his wife helped him along, her arm firmly locked in his. Once or twice that year the ambulance came, blue lights flashing. A stretcher was carried into the house and came back out again, heaved down the narrow stairs, bearing our elderly friend, followed by his anxious wife. After a few days he came home again. Then one day the ambulance disappeared with him once more and returned no more. Worried looking sons and daughters appeared at the house, letting themselves in and out and piling bags and cases of belongings into the car. The old man's wife disappeared with them.

Did he die in hospital? Did he get moved to a nursing home? Did they move away to live with their children? We never knew. But one day we looked out of our window and watched as a big waste disposal lorry came to take away their furniture. There it sat on the street outside their flat - a few old sticks of shabby furniture: an old bedstead and a sagging mattress, a chest of drawers, a scratched table and four dilapidated chairs, some grubby pieces of shelving and a few bags and boxes. Was this all? Was this the sum total of a life? I was shocked. The men threw it all into the lorry and it was crunched up in the machinery. One minute these things were the lovingly collected trappings of a family's lifelong history, the next they were abandoned, thrown out on the street for the neighbours to gawp at and crunched up in the impersonal and uncaring jaws of a home-devouring monster. Week after week the old man had toiled at his job to pay for these precious items; week after week his wife had lovingly scrubbed and polished them to make a home.

The other day I gazed out of our window at a small pile of our own belongings, stacked on the pavement waiting for the lorry to come. A table and chairs, scratched and well-used, which I remember buying in Habitat a long time ago. I was so proud of it until our cleaning lady covered it in furniture polish (despite my express instructions) and ruined all the lacquer. The clumsy old microwave oven was a relic from my inlaws' bungalow, abandoned when they moved together into a nursing home, but bringing back memories of their cosy, old-fashioned kitchen. The battered, yellowing plastic garden chairs were donated by the previous owners of our current home, already worn out and now replaced.

But each item represented something of our lives, a 'happening', a memory, a moment of happiness and satisfaction, another step on the way to making a home that we could be proud of and happy to live in. They gave rise to special memories that only we could access: our family history. But belongings wear out in the end so regretfully we had replaced them. So there was our 'stuff' on the pavement for all the neighbours to see. No doubt the people over the road were already busy guessing - making up stories about us, the neighbours on the other side of the street - and wondering what our new dining table looked like. Neighbours are like that.