You see it started with a severe
case of insomnia. House insomnia, that is. House insomnia is
defined as: “clinical sleeplessness due to a lack of house."
A particularly bad bout one evening drove me to write a short story about
it - at 3 am, of course. Don't they have medicine for that kind of
thing?
Here it is: A story of one family
and one imaginary house.
Ever
since they had been married, they had been homeless. Not the kind where
you live in a cardboard box under a bridge but the kind where you live in
someone else’s home – not your own. A rented apartment or house -- temporary
lodging, so to speak.
At
first, it didn’t bother them so much. They put most of their belongings
in storage and took only the essentials. They lived in several different
countries and became accustomed to rented homes that were iffy in every possible
way. They made little repairs here and there but they never so much as painted a room. They were tenants, after all, and so they
tread lightly.
The
years passed and they had a family. But they were still homeless.
One
day, the wife in this family decided that enough was enough – it was time for
their own house. The husband wasn’t so sure about this idea at
first, but after some reasoning, he agreed. You see, his wife had
tremendous powers of persuasion.
The
husband began to draw pictures of the house – their house – their
house-to-be. He was meant to draw this house because he was an
architect. But up until then, he had only drawn other people’s houses.
As for the wife, she began to sleep soundly. She dreamt during the day and at night about a house filled with rooms
all painted in the colors of her choice…
