In 2019, I posted a piece called Crumbling Structure on my old blog site. As I worked on a piece I thought I would post this week, I remembered the old post. I decided to update it a bit as a precursor to the new post for next week.
October 27, 2019:
When I was growing up, we traveled a good bit. My grandparents lived an hour and a half away. We went there often. We also went on big trips regularly. I didn’t keep a calendar but my memory feels like we went on long trips at least every other year if not yearly. I wish I had a time-lapse video of myself and my siblings during a long trip. Those were the days when seat belts were optional. We were literally all over the backseat, from the rear window to the floorboards. I can’t imagine a back seat trip in a seat belt. I would have imploded or perhaps murdered one or more brothers.
Long trips called for the employment of every possible form of entertainment. I liked to read or listen to music on my super hip Walkman. Sometimes, too, during moments of peaceful interaction, we would play road games. We played the alphabet game with signs and car tags. My younger brother and I also played a game that I think I made up. We would hunt for old falling apart structures on the landscape of wherever we were at the moment. When I would spot one I would get Greg’s attention and say, “Look, it’s my dream house!”, then we would spend a moment appreciating it together. We would do the same when he spotted one. The more pitiful and dilapidated, the more proud our little voices would be declaring it. We got many a giggle from those dream houses.
To this day I still notice crumbling structures. There is one I drive by almost every day. Now that I am older, I find myself very bothered by them. I am offended for them that they have been abandoned. I am sad that no one cared for them. I want to know why whoever owns the land doesn’t just clear them and put them out of their misery. Yes, I realize they don’t have feelings. Personification is my very favorite literary tool. I am bad to assign feelings to every inanimate object. My imagination runs away with me. The questions that I can’t help but ask are, “Who lived and loved there?” and “What memories are being dishonored by letting the structure sit there and rot?” That is all heightened now for me because that exact thing is happening to my grandparents’ house and I feel powerless to do anything about it. It is complicated. I can imagine that is why there are structures all over the world in the same condition. I am not OK with any of them. Back then we joked and called them dream houses. Now they feel more like nightmares.
Oddly enough, this topic isn’t ever very far away from my thoughts. Like lots of things, crumbling structure makes for an easy analogy. Here is my prevailing thought on the topic: Those structures remain there because they have been there for lifetimes. The need, the people, and the circumstances have changed, but the structures remain. You can’t just wad up a building and throw it in the trash. Those structures become the responsibility of the current landowner. Who wants to endure the expense of tearing down a nuisance structure if there’s no immediate need for the space? So nature slowly reclaims them unless someone comes along who wants to put something new there. For many, no one ever comes.
Hubby Guy and I went on a hike in Shenandoah National Park several years ago. We ended up at the ruins of what was once a church. The structure was gone except for the front steps. The rest had become forest floor. We found pieces of old pews. We also found a few headstones from what is an old cemetery. It isn’t marked in any way. It was so sad to me. Something that once had such an important purpose is just gone. Maybe that notion of purpose is what haunts me about the crumbling structures. In some twisted way, I imagine those structures as people. In my lively thought life, I share characteristics across animate and inanimate. It isn’t a stretch for me to see people as structures. People are just far more complicated.
I am keenly aware of old structures in my own life. In a person I consider structure to be the “druthers” we live by, our likes and dislikes, and our unique ways of doing things and organizing life. As an admitted perfectionist, I claim LOTS of structure. Upon really thinking about it I realize I have more crumbling structure than sound structure. I could also tell you if you cared to know, where every stick of it came from. Why in the world have I hung on so long to structure that is doing me no good? The needs, the people, and the circumstances in my life have changed, but the structures remain. Like many clothes in my closet that I never wear, I hang on to crumbling structures because I think I might eventually need them.
Here is the truth… crumbling structure is a hindrance. I use it as a memorial to what once was. It stands in the way of truth. It is a giant eyesore in the way of the beautiful present. I have to crawl through the rubble to get to my newer, sound structure. Why climb through ruins on a daily basis? That is a sad way to live.
I am putting the crumbling structure in my life on notice. I am willing to endure the personal expense of tearing it down in order to make room for my purpose in life. I’ve got no time for rotting real estate. That space is valuable.
August 9, 2022:
A couple of years before writing that post, I bought a theoretical bulldozer. The bulldozer’s name is counseling. I can imagine myself shouting “Yippee ki yay”, slamming that thing into drive, and going after crumbling structures on the landscape of my life.
Now, standing on freshly leveled new ground cleared of debris, I remember the process as exhilarating. At the time, painful, difficult, and time-consuming were the words most appropriate to describe driving the bulldozer.
With fresh clarity, I see many things differently. My life feels much better than it did before all the bulldozing. Structures still remain that need to come down, but my attention lately is held more by building new structures.
What about you? Can you identify crumbling structures in your life? Do you hold on to old ways of doing or organizing things that are no longer serving you?