Every structure will crumble, one day. Even that glistening glass building next door. But that’s not what matters.
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When we moved into this apartment, construction had just begun on a high rise across the street. A huge dirt lot, a mostly empty space. The work was all ground level – underpinning the foundation, something that involved huge spiral drills to do something to do something to do something… I’m not an engineer, and even after one explained to me the cause for all this boring into the earth, I can’t remember, much less restate, how and why all those mammoth drills are necessary.
At length, an actual base materialized. A big, hollow concrete block.
Over the past year and a half, that block has disappeared inside a glass exterior. They’ve been having a building bonanza over there. The crew has grown, the structure has risen. I don’t know how many stories exactly, but if I had to guess? Upwards of fifty.
I’ve never watched a building in progress. Some days and weeks go by, with little to no noticeable changes. Other mornings, we wake up to whole new floors of glass windows and overnight landscaping.
After eighteen months, they’re still working. Mostly on the interior, now that the full structure’s frame is complete. I don’t know when they’ll be done. Hopefully soon, since the night crew is occasionally involved in decibel levels better suited to outdoor music festivals.
It has been fascinating to watch, and to think of all the new people who will live there.
♦◊♦
My grandfather built a house. Designed it himself, and then built it. This seems like the sort of thing that might have been more common back in the day.
A few years ago, my mom took us out to see that old farmhouse where she grew up. It was a saltbox design, blue and white. And it had stood empty for many years, after imminent domain laws forced my grandparents and their neighbors out. The land was meant for an airport that ended up being built elsewhere.
We wandered through the main floor, which had clearly been used as temporary shelter for someone (many someones, more likely). There was trash, a horrible smell, broken light bulbs, graffiti. I hated being there. I had a few memories from childhood, when we lived briefly with my grandparents, and to see the place in such a ruinous mess was something beyond sad. A deeper melancholy.
A place where you ran around as a kid, suddenly broken down and empty.
The fireplace mantle is now in my aunt and uncle’s house, a handmade vestige of a place no longer standing. After being briefly used for police training exercises, my grandparents’ old home was finally torn down. I don’t know why.
I just know it’s gone.
♦◊♦
I’ve been thinking of that old farmhouse, while watching the skyscraper next door go up. And it reminds me of an anecdotal story about Caesar.
Upon surveying a valley filled with troops, recently fresh from a battle won, Caesar began to cry. Someone asked him what was wrong.
And he said something like: We will all be gone in 100 years.
Every structure will crumble, one day. Even that glistening glass building next door.
But that’s not what matters.
What matters is the human legacy you leave behind.
And while I’ll be writing something much longer about all that my grandparents left us, one thing they both believed in was the importance of education. I remember that, and it’s meant more to my life than the bricks and boards of their old house. My grandparents’ commitment to their own learning, to their children’s learning, to their grandchildren’s learning – I caught that. And it has shaped my life profoundly.
And it is my honor to continue that commitment, in part through writing for The Good Men Project.
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