A ghost story

They say there’s a ghost in my new house.

It’s not really a new house. It’s actually as old I am, having been built the year I was born. But it is my new house. My husband and I have decided that our next new adventure is to move into this house and make it our own. It was a huge decision. It is a huge decision, one whose ramifications I am certain to feel for the rest of my life.

In the beginning, it seemed logical enough. Our special boy required a therapy room. Our two smaller ones were coming to a point where sharing a room was no longer healthy or wise. I had lost my writing room to my mother, who moved in with me after her stroke. It seemed only logical to want to move to a bigger space.

Which perhaps is the basis of my first suspicion that my reason, or my deep, deep down reason wasn’t practical at all: the idea that it was logical. That’s not me. I never decide based on logic. It is at once what makes me infuriating and lovable at the same time. Every thing I’ve ever chosen has come from the workings of my heart. This move must be a desire of my heart.

What is it I truly long for?

It seems like a ridiculous thing to ask when you see how beautiful the old-new house is. Built in the 1960s, my parents built this house when they were in their 40s, my age now. At that time, they had six living children already. My mother had lost four. They had wise bankruptcy. They were wizened beyond their years. I come to this house at the same age and know it is not the same.

I walk around and place my palms on the bricks my mother wrapped around her house. I ask our oldest carpenter if he can remember my mother’s reason for planting a plant box in an unusual area. “What did she want to achieve, kaya?” I ask with such honesty.

Old closets reveal my mother’s love for hooks. My father’s old desk and a copy of the tax code are still here. The kitchen design is a disaster. In the ’80s my mother had a special room built for Mang Art, our beloved driver whom everyone close to me knows. It still stands here. In front of the garage made more for James Bond than the attorney my father was. Neither my father nor Mang Art matches this driveway. I try to inhabit what my parents might have desired when they built this house. I have never felt closer to them. Perhaps a part of me wants to live here because I just want to be hugged like a child again.

For many, this house was a refuge. I have a steady stream of memories of people coming to the door asking for my father’s help. My parents preferred to hold everything in this sprawling house rather than let their kids go out into the unknown. Sleepovers, class parties, rehearsals, even retreats were all welcomed into this house. Once, my bedroom was made into the sacristy. The priest called the area the most powerful place on earth. There the exposed Host lay — right beside my pink bed!

Is it any wonder then that ghosts have found a home here too? There are sightings of things moving indiscriminately. A couple of white ladies have been seen roaming around. Workers claim to hear the laughter of children emanating from the garden at all times of the day. (My mother is convinced it is the four lost children.) There are certain rooms that make one shiver inexplicably. I think of all living things who loved this house and have passed away — a grandmother, a father, old friends, uncles, aunts, household help, a plethora of dogs, cats, horses, trees, plants. When I was 18, the night an uncle died, he came to my room and asked me to accompany him. 

In an effort to make sense of the ghost sightings, I consulted a friend-priest and what he said gave me a better appreciation of things mysterious. He spoke of believing in all things coming from God. He encouraged me to think of space as something that I cannot just presume to be mine and mine alone. Ghosts need no land titles, after all. He wondered if I could accept them as part of my life, as they would have to accept me as part of theirs. It makes no logical sense, really, and here I am, glad I’m made the way I am. Every day, I walk the rooms of my old-new house and accept the age that the walls carry and all that age brings with it.

Age, aging, growing old, getting nearer and nearer to dying, are mysteries I feel to be getting closer to as my body begins to physically move to this old-new house. I think of brick, mortar, soil, sand; the materials that make things upright and strong. They will live longer than me. I think of the trees that have been here, how they’ve grown and never stopped growing. I think of how much energy it takes to become a tree; how it never doubts itself and how nonchalant it is about flowering and dying. I wonder if the ghosts keep learning too as they walk through the walls of the house.

There is another theory of ghosts that interests me now as I think about all of this: how they may be merely manifestations of my own fears. I find that strangely comforting: the idea that I might actually be the white lady, and I am merely finding a place that will welcome me completely.