Germination

With all the furniture removed, the house looked tired.

Image Credits: epicgardening.com

We watched as the rainwater washed over our timber floorboards. The dishwater grey covered every inch of humble turpentine, seeping through the gaps and silently uprooting the house from below. I woke up that morning to my mum, still in her pyjamas, frantically scooping up water out of our bathroom into laundry buckets and my dad in the backyard, completely drenched, investigating the pipes. 

My parents bought the place not long after I was born, having outgrown our modest one-storey in outer-Sydney. My dad was dropping off a taxi passenger in the area when he drove past the house on auction. It must have been the burnt-red brick that caught his eye, but the inside was perfect — east-facing windows, understated cream walls, and ample floor space across multiple bedrooms, enough to fit all three generations of the family under one roof. Nevermind the pathetic vertical blinds (that my mum hated) with their plastic joiners which snapped without force, or the fact that the house was situated in the bottom of a valley (which my grandma warned about). It was good enough, good enough for the price at least – and that’s all that mattered at the time. 

Like every household, we had rules. One was that outdoor shoes were not allowed inside. That once you stepped in through the front door, you were not to bring in any of the soiled remnants of an unforgiving workday. That by coming home, you agreed to leave at the front porch the indignities, the subtle slights, the mispronunciations, the self-doubt, and the underestimation unashamedly hurled by the outside world. But inevitably, there would be days that even with our shoes removed, the dirt would continue to cling to the soles of our feet, imprinting its ugly expression on the same turpentine floors that other family members would tread. When I was younger, I used to run around the house barefoot but I stopped doing so when I noticed the invisible grime stuck to my feet.

That day, the flood water emerged from within, spilling out from the bathroom drain and sprawling across the living room, into the garage. No corner of the house was left untouched and anything resting on the ground became soaked.

the fraying living room rug stained grey-brown from sweat and tea,

the stacks of outdated newspaper clippings that my mum held onto for later reading but never did,

the grandfather chair, with its fading floral upholstery, which now sat empty

the many, many boxes of forgotten textbooks that had been scribbled on and rubbed out so many times that their pages felt rough and sore, left untouched after me.

Not everything we lost would need to be replaced, but it would be the first time we had ever bought seconds of many things. 

At the same time, all the dust that had accumulated over the years, underneath our shelves and beneath the dishwasher – it had finally been set free. 

With all the furniture removed, the house looked tired.

its yellowing cream walls, cracking at the ceiling,

its puckering floorboards and gaping skirting, 

its empty rooms with wardrobes filled with kids' clothing.

Even so, my mum still keeps the bedding intact, just in case any of us thought to visit home on the weekend and stay the night.