There was a house in Marathon that made me wonder. It was directly across the field from the house where we stayed. It was abandoned. But that’s not really new, there are lots of abandoned houses in Marathon. This one was different. If you looked close, you could see a prideful family lived there. A family who cared, who tried.

The fences posts were capped with cloverleafs made of three horseshoes nicely spot welded. The house was painted a bright shade of blue, it was previously green. There was a homemade shrine to our Lady of Guadalupe in the front yard next to the house, the statute long gone. Over the front door was a plaque showing the Sacred Heart, a Crucifix, Our Lady, the family name and a request, Dios Bendiga nuestro hogar, God Bless Our Home. On the front gate was another sign with the names of the family, and the same request of God.

And while he might have blessed their home at some point, it lay derelict now. The shrine abandoned. The signs still hanging. The post caps rusting. Windows broken. Furniture inside broken. And I wondered where that prideful family went and where are they now and why’d they leave behind their signs. And I thought of all the other houses I’ve seen over the years, abandoned, places where people once lived, and in that abandoned home I saw myself and my house a hundred years from now or maybe only fifty. A blank spot, a place where someone once was. And I thought the best I might leave behind are all my trees but no one will know who once lived there.