I walk past the Gingerbread House every day on the way home from school. I have to go the long way around, take Watercress Road instead of Hayne Street with all the other girls. I like that though, walking on my own, and besides I can’t help it, I am in love.
The Gingerbread House is one hundred years old, or so Papa tells me. I wonder if the willow tree has been there since it was built, or even before. I love it’s lonely windows with veils of grey curtain and it’s big red chimney that the turtledoves roost in. Most of all I love it’s gate, curled iron and overgrown with creepers that burst tiny violet flowers. I want to swing on that gate.
Maybe it’s strange to be in love with a house, to walk shyly past it each day and lie in bed at night dreaming and wondering what it looks like inside. Maybe it’s silly to wish wish wish that it were my own, that little front room would be mine and I would fill it with pictures and books and flowers-in-teacups. In summer I would lie on the grass and watch the bees feast on the honeysuckle and chamomile garden or climb the willow tree and tie ribbons to it’s branches.
It’s empty though, My Gingerbread House, it has been for ever and always which means as long as I can remember. I think it must be lonely, missing it’s families and dreaming of the children, ghosts in the hallways. I know it is sleeping and waiting, waiting, for someone to love it and awaken it with just the right kiss.
June 17, 2009
18 responses to The Gingerbread House
That was beautiful… I, too have felt that way about a house before. It was old and blue and empty and once my mother let me look inside it but it didn’t have any floors. I would sit in my window and make lists (one of my favorite things to do) of how to restore it and make it mine and what color curtains to put in the front window. We have moved since then, but I still think about that house and what it would be like to live there.
Houses like that are precious, I hope one day you can live in your old-blue house.
I don’t think it’s strange to be in love with a house – I was in love with a pond once. I think we all have those sorts of loves.
Your pond must have been beautiful. Place loves are one of the best sort of loves.
Have you ever read The Suitcase Kid by Jacqueline Wilson? There’s a house in there called ‘Mulberry Cottage’, and the main character (who used to live in it, now has moved away) feels exactly the same way about it. I loved reading those parts over and over again in my copy. :3
I have, I have! I love that book, I have a Sylvanian Family rabbit that I named ‘Radish’ after the one in the book.
Oh, that was my favorite book when I was ten years old. Thank you for reminding me of it, I need to track down an English copy!
That’s a gorgeous story, I love the way you write, it’s very fairytale-y, but not overloaded. Just simple and clean, with the ornaments hidden behind the letters.
The Gingerbread House makes me sad though – empty houses always seem so cold and sad, like trusty golden retrievers left by the road. It’s still a beautiful tale, (often the rooms of sad and beautiful overlap) thank you for sharing it.
Thank you, thank you <3 I think my writing style still needs a lot of work, but that’s why I’m practising.
The most beautiful things have at least a grain of sadness in them, I think.
This was really sweet, it totally reminds me of a short novel by Julie Andrews (pen name Julie Edwards) named Mandy. Have you read it? It’s one of my favorites.
It’s strange the way empty houses are simultaneously sad and lonely and full of possibility and charm.
I have not read it, but I will try and find it if you think I’d like it.
That was truly beautiful to read. :)
I think we’ve all fallen in love with a house, garden, pond, or something like that.
When I visited an old postal office in my city’s historical center I fell in love with it’s architecture, and most of all it’s stairs. <3
Stairs a lovely, especially spiraling ones. I prefer old architecture, it makes me sad seeing all the glass and steel giants they are putting up in my city now.
You write so beautifully..
I often think about houses this way, as if they are giant dollhouses… I wonder what my life would be like if I lived in them, and what would be in all of the rooms. I love seeing a little peek of people’s lives through their front windows sometimes too. ^^
Beautiful… :’3
I remembered an old house in my childhood…
The people that lived there were going to move, and they were having a sale all over the house…
I fell in love with that house, it was red and made of wood… It was so big (or maybe I was so little..) It was full of toys too..
Maybe that’s what I loved the most… :]
What lovely writing, Skye. Great descriptions!
I want to go to a Gingerbread house, own this history is beautiful.