Gingerbread House

Gingerbread houses are made of cookie dough and icing. They are pretty and sweet and fragile. Real houses are big, beautiful and strong and today, cost a huge amount of money that few are able to pay off. Ever. But they must be had. They look wonderful in their neighbourhoods all in a row with sidewalks and driveways and rules to keep them painted in planned colours, tidy with well kept plantings. The front lawns are miniscule and the back ones, small, because no ones uses them. There are no side gardens because one house is almost joined to the next one. There is a decor styled back patio for pretty barbecue parties. The garages hold one car and space for another one in front. RVs and boats are not permitted. The people are real and not made of gingerbread but they look extra nice when they pile the kids into the cars in the morning and take them to school or the babysitters. No one is home all day unless there is a nanny or the grandparents are installed as such. After office hours, the cars with the house people come home and the children enter with their stylish backpacks now emptied of the popular nutritious lunches but holding homework and assorted screen devices. Parents bring their various styles of briefcases and device carriers in through the attractive doorways.  Inside the house the real family scramble begins. It's time to get dinner going, do homework, ready for activities to attend, and later watch favorite screens and perhaps family interact. The backyard is not used. Everyone is too busy. After dinner, it's playdates and sports and lesson events happening.  The cars are out again and equipment loaded on, coming and going until bedtime. Going back in time, the quieter more relaxed times, the difference is remarkable. There were no gingerbread houses then. Homes were bought with cash. Someone was there most of the day. One salary seemed to do. If there was a mortgage it was paid off or would be. Front yards were exactly how you wanted them. Most had a tree, if not in the front, in the backyard, which was big then. One tree had a swing and sometimes a fort with a ladder up into the leafy branches. Neighbourhood dogs roamed freely and everyone had one. Cats were there too, but not always seen. In your backyard, you could dig holes, build odd structures, climb the unkempt trees, some of which were fruit trees with scabby product. Sometimes a vegetable garden took up a corner and tomatoes and peas grew there amongst weeds. The dog had a house  that dad or the kids built. The lawn was cut not on schedule. The front yard was how you liked it and the front of your house was the way your family left it. Cars, if you had more than one, parked at the side because the garage  was jammed with hockey sticks and baby carriages and boxes of old things. There was a basketball hoop over the garage because of its patch of cement. Brick barbecues at the back smoked because they used coals. The smell of steaks burning dominated Sundays. Hot dogs, the cheap kind, were done in the firepit that dad created in the middle of the back lawn and in the evenings, the family and neighbours sat around its embers and talked to each other.