2007-09-12
my house is a very very very fine house
In just a couple days my parents will sign the papers on their new condo. As pretty as it is, part of me is of course overwhelmed by the fact they are leaving my childhood home. Even worse, someone else is going to live there. It’s become more than they can take care of and fortunately the woman who is buying it is completely in love with it. She made the offer five days after it went on the market. They sign it away on my 39th birthday. It was theirs for 39 years and two months. I plan to sneak in after everything is out of the house and take some pictures of things I want to remember.
Little things like the cut out on the front porch where many years ago milk was delivered, but for us was where we let the cat out. Functionality long gone since the house was sided, the inside part looks the same. I also want to find where I carved “I hate mom” into my woodwork. It’s subtle … I didn’t want to get caught. I want a picture of the side walk where my dad pushed me on my bike when the training wheels came off (and on and off until he got sick of it and said it was the LAST time they were coming off!) I want a picture of the stairs and the railing, for so many reasons. When I was little, we swung our stuffed animals on strings from the landing. When we got older we flew paper airplanes down them. As I grew older, the became a hurdle to sneak up, stepping on the parts that wouldn’t let out a squeak and let mom know I was home. They are the stairs that I victoriously climbed after my car crash and many months of rehab.
Those are the happy things of the house. I don’t need pictures of anything else, because really, there isn’t anything else. I don’t have any super fond memories of family dinners. I have no ability to walk into any of the rooms and think “remember when we …” because we didn’t. Dad worked hard to get what we had. Mom worked hard to keep it clean. There was no playing together as a family. It just didn’t happen. No game playing around the house, no hide and seek or peek-a-boo. Missing out on that kind of fun at the time probably wasn’t a big deal, it was how it felt later when you realized other families had fun together that it hurt.
May the new owner have only happy times, may she fill the rooms with love and laughter. It’s a good house … it deserves only the best within its walls.
