When the Man was little, he lived in a blue house on the south side of the river. A son of immigrants, his home was the natural boarding house for anyone with at least four of the sacraments under their belt and a healthy appetite for soda bread.
The Man couldn’t stand this. Regardless of his age, he seemed to already have a baby-boomer contempt of the transient lifestyle. You can’t really blame him though. He shared a room his entire life with at least one sibling and anyone other than immediate family in the house was just clogging his domestic pores.
So one day, he mustered up all his sardonicism, and asked the other man eating at his kitchen table exactly how long he would be staying.
“For the duration,” he responded in an unsmiling Irish brogue.
The Man had no idea what the other man was getting at. The duration of what? He didn’t stay much longer at the house, and in a few weeks another member of the diaspora was eating at the same spot. So much for “the duration”.
He never really tried to unpack the other man’s response farther than his own initial confusion. For the Man, it was just one of those hilarious little anecdotes: an all-too-Canadian snippet of life in brackish cultural waters. But the attitude of “the duration”. What about that?
Years later, when the Man became a man, he was married, and bought a brown house on the south side of the river with a lot of rooms. These rooms would be specifically for those whose home it was, not for those who merely needed one.
When the mortgage was signed, the “For Sale” sign taken down, the show furniture moved out and the Man and his wife’s brand new furniture was moved in, it would be only one more sleep until the Man would finally have a home of his own.
His last night in his apartment was a restless one for the Man. His wife was excited, and, fortunately for her, excitement put her to sleep. The Man was the same. So why the restlessness, he wondered?
The Man kissed his excited, sleeping wife on the head, rolled off his rented mattress, and crept along someone else’s creaky hardwood to the kitchen. On the rough, surely once magnificent teak table lay the key to the house that would be his in just a few hours.
He squinted at the oven. 12:11. Hmm, he thought. I guess I’ve had a new home for eleven minutes already.
The Man shuffled over to the coat rack and reached under his worn varsity jacket. He pulled out a tarnished key ring and shuffled back to the kitchen table. He sat down and fumbled with the key ring to open it and slipped the brand new brass key next to the slightly bent Nissan key on the ring, jumped up from his seat, and headed to his new home.
He opened the front door with a little trouble, new lock and all. Inside was what he had paid for: home.
—
Years later, after all the rooms had been filled and emptied again, the Man and his wife began discussing what to do with the place they had poured decades of their lives into. They wanted outta there. Somewhere hot maybe. The Man and his wife had always talked about getting a boat. Maybe a little place down south. They heard their dollar would stretch like taffy down there. It was decided. South they would go.
The Man’s wife brought home brochures, pamphlets, glossy literature with sun and palm trees, tanned backs. He never got around to looking at them. She set up appointments with travel agents. He made excuses.
His wife was frustrated. “I thought this was the plan!” she said. “What about our golden years? How long do you want to stay at this place, anyway?”
“The duration,” he replied.
“History of Irish Soda Bread.” History of Irish Soda Bread. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 June 2014. <http://www.abigailsbakery.com/bread-recipes/history-of-irish-soda-bread.htm>.
Thank you – 🙂