This weekend, I said the final goodbye to my childhood home. Let’s recap, shall we? In the last year and a half, I have said goodbye to my grandfather, my mom, my grandma and now, my family home and its contents. In November, we moved my dad to a retirement home close to my house so I can see him daily and help him as he ages. I went through all the treasures my mom and dad had collected over the course of their 52 years together and I distributed some of them to people I thought would appreciate them. The remaining items my dad, my brother and I didn’t want were tagged and displayed and put up for sale. I found us some buyers for the home and we closed today; but over the weekend, Scott and I made the journey back to the house so I could say goodbye to yet another part of my life that I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to yet.
When my dad left the Army, we moved out of North Carolina and briefly to a suburb of Chicago, where my dad attempted to work for my grandfather in his flower shop on the South Side. (Remember that line from “Field of Dreams”, where Ray Kinsella is talking about wife Annie’s parents and says “After graduation, we moved to the Midwest and stayed with her family as long as we could… almost a full afternoon.” Yeah, that kind of sums up our experience as well.) After the suburbs, we made the move to Mercer County, Illinois where we lived in a house surrounded by cornfields until we moved to the town of Aledo. I remember the day we moved- I unpacked my belongings in my new room and then ran outside, jumped on my bike and found all my neighborhood friends and family and cruised past the houses along our street. For a kid moving from the country, with only a couple of people to play with, one of which was my little brother, in-town living was paradise. The house was huge, had a myriad of hiding places and nooks and crannies and it had an enormous open attic.
But my bedroom…Eventually the walls were covered in pictures of best friends and posters of my favorite bands. Stuffed animals and pompoms lined the shelves. And I had this enormous purple and pink braided oval rug over the beautiful hardwood. I cried over boyfriends, talked with my friends on the phone for hours, shared my bed with our pet boxers, fought with my parents, and was rejected on the phone by the only boy I ever asked to a dance after which I cried myself to sleep- all in that room.
The house was built in the early 1900’s. It has a regal front porch with large white pillars that were often wrapped in real pine garland at Christmas with tiny white, twinkling lights and bright red bows. If my mom had time, every window had a white candle and there were so many windows, that honestly, I can’t believe she didn’t burn the place to the ground by blowing the fuse box to hell. But the outside at Christmas was nothing compared to the inside. Inside was a magical display of holiday decor- she collected the Department 56 lighted houses and she made room for every single one of them. She took such care in putting them out on all of her surfaces. She had trees and bridges and people and little accessories to go with them. It was a sight to behold, even as an adult. Walking through the house and looking at the Christmas villages and farms she created, made you feel like a child, caught up in the wonder of the season. She hung garlands and she displayed her collections of deer and Old World Santas. The house always smelled of cinnamon or cider and the tiny lights from all the decorations literally made the house glow like a campfire.
But the piece de resistance was the tree. Because the ceilings in that house are so high, my mom had a knack for picking out a Christmas tree that would make the California Redwoods jealous. Every year, that tree got a little bigger and every year, she would walk in the front door after it had been put up by my dad and his friends and her little hands would cover her mouth and she would gasp and then giggle at the monstrosity of the pine she had meticulously chosen. That’s another whole blog entry.
The kitchen in our home got a real workout- that woman not only cooked a three or more course meal for us every night, which we diligently ate at the dining room table, she made breads and pies for fundraisers and events. She made cookies and brownies for grandkids. She made meals for countless people, in times of need, to make their lives easier. She tried new recipes and old ones. She made up recipes. That kitchen was loved and then gutted and redesigned and then loved some more.
The floors creaked, the windows with their ropes and weights gave way and were replaced by new vinyl ones, the garage door that had to be manually opened and shut was replaced by a new one with an opener. Central air was installed, long after my brother and I suffered from heat stroke every summer and moved away. The shed that I dented with some wild baseball pitches and that Dad eventually crushed taking down a tree (now that’s a funny story) was replaced with a one he built himself. The walls were painted, the floors were carpeted and then the walls were repainted and the floors recarpeted again. Didn’t matter. Not once, in all the changes, did that home lose its charm or the love that was shared in those walls. I grew fonder of it the older I got. And now, if I thought it made sense, I would move back there in a heartbeat and maintain it in all its glory.
When the idea that I would soon need to sell our home was made clear, the thoughts started to creep in that I would need to be able to list it on the MLS, following all the guidelines set for us Realtors. I would have to be professional. I would have to take the personality out of it. I would have to be the seller I tell my sellers to be when they are selling their homes- objective. Turns out, the buyers I was working with at the time loved it and saved me having to go through the trouble of listing it. Which is good- because I honestly wasn’t sure how to describe my childhood home and be objective about it. I sat down one night and wrote the following description and then laughed at myself, as it has a significant number of infractions that would surely catch the attention of the board and land me a whole mess of fines…
“You’ll fall in love with the sparkling chandelier, the elegant staircase and the fireplace in this beautiful, character-filled but tastefully updated home, the very minute you walk through the front door. The large, open rooms will entice you to buy the world’s largest Christmas tree and entertain your family and friends with heavenly, culinary concoctions and fine wine. The enormous backyard could be home to endless family wiffleball games and hours of serene and peaceful gardening. The sunroom can be the place where you keep your plants, your piano or your never-ending collection of books. Set up a big comfy chair in there and read for hours. The updated kitchen with its tall and useful cabinets and solid surface counters will be the center of your existence, where you whip up countless dinners, roll out pie crusts and can tomatoes. While you wash the dishes, you can gaze out the windows at the double lot with colorful gardens full of perennials, the birds and of course, the squirrels attempting to steal from your feeders. You can whip your towel over your shoulder and step out onto the lovely back porch and yell at the little varmints, threatening to shoot them, even though you never will. From the back porch, you can walk down the steps and pick tomatoes and other vegetables from one of the four raised garden beds just off the patio. The patio itself is large enough for family games of basketball and HORSE, Fourth of July BBQs and homemade ice cream-making and best of all, for hosting wedding brunches. Back inside, you’ll love the creaks in the back staircase as you head upstairs to view the bedrooms. The master, with its transom window, has large, solid doors that divide the two-room suite or fold back to keep the space open. The two walk-in closets will provide plenty of space for not only all the clothes you bought during the many years of shopping trips with your daughter, but also to hide all your Christmas gifts. All of the rooms have solid wood doors, perfect for door-slamming teenagers, and the elegance of the upstairs chandelier is carried throughout the hallway in grand wall sconces. The walk-up attic could be beautifully finished or could simply house all the Christmas decorations you put out every year, as well as every known copy of National Geographic, Family Circle and Gourmet Magazine, making yours the only home in Mercer County that is more stocked with reading material than the local library. Your children will enjoy going through 70 years worth of cards, scrapbooks and pictures you packed into boxes and stacked in the vast space that reaches temperatures upwards of 1000 degrees in the summer. Lastly, the room above the garage, surrounded by windows, will be the perfect place to set up your home office so you can grade your students’ papers until the wee hours of the morning while you consume pot after pot of coffee. Prepare yourself. You’re about to write an offer.”
I’m telling you…I would go straight to Realtor Jail if I put that on the MLS, but damn, that’s a hard house to let go of, let alone sell yourself.
So on Friday, Christmas Day, I went back to Aledo and walked through every room- picturing my mom, my dad, my brother and I doing something in each one. Then I sat on the bottom step of the staircase and wept.
I wept for the loss of my mom, the loss of my childhood, the end of Christmas mornings where I ran down the stairs with my little brother with wonder and excitement, the end of homecomings where I walked through that front door and my mom always greeted me with hugs and her beautiful smile, and the loss of a place that symbolized safety and security and comfort. I stared out at the rooms in front of me, picturing all the activity that had taken place there for 38 years.
After a while, I stood up and thanked the house for all the great memories it gave our family. I quietly closed the front door, locked it and got in the car. As we drove away, I pictured my mom and dad standing on the front porch, waving to us until they could no longer see our car, just as they did every time we left the house for years.
When we got back to Iowa, I walked through our house and marvelled at my mom’s Christmas houses, which are beautifully displayed at our own home. I walked into our kitchen and looked at her cutting boards, which I had hung on the walls and I looked in my drawers at the orange Tupperware measuring cups and the wooden utensils she used when she cooked. I pulled the flour sifter out of the cabinet and turned the handle a couple of times, just to hear that scraping sound it made when she baked something that needed sifted flour. I guess home isn’t just a frame and plaster and paint and carpet. It’s a place we hold deep down, in the very depths of our insides. It’s safe there-no one can alter it or make it disappear. It’s the longing we feel to be with the people we’ve lost and the comfort in knowing we’ll see them again. It’s the customs and the habits and the traditions we grew up with and the new ones we create with our own families. You can sell the home, but it never really leaves you.
I sat down at the table and in my mind, I wrapped up all I was feeling and all the memories I had at that moment and the tears I had been crying and I put it all into a lovely little box with some pretty ribbon and I placed it in the corner of my mind for those days I feel sorry for myself. After all, the gift of all those memories, the fact that I actually have them and lived them, should be more than enough to satisfy the saddest of hearts. What a lucky girl I am.