In May, 2006 my mother sold the house that she and my father had shared for the previous thirty years. While my brothers and I hadn’t quite grown up in it, (we moved there when I, the youngest (and favorite) was 12) we did consider it the family house. We’d been through many of the most dramatic times in our lives as a family there – my mother’s cancer diagnosis, all of my surviving grandparents’ deaths, two high school graduations, three college graduations, three weddings, seven births, my father’s and my cancer diagnoses and, perhaps most dramatically, my father’s death. It was the place we convened when everyone was in town, the place we stored all our old books, photos, wedding dresses, some, even years later, wedding gifts and other assorted crap and certainly the place we all considered home.
My mother had been wanting to sell the house and downsize for as long as I could remember, but my father loved his house (it was in a neighborhood which, once you turned off the busy street and entered the way closing in on our house, was the kind of place that brought a sense of calm) with its wooded backyard and open floor plan. He loved coming home to it each night and loved more that there was always plenty of room for any iteration of his children or grandchildren that wanted to bunk for a while. Aside from the incredible art collection that filled every wall, it was never “decorated” and always comfortable. It’s lack of change over the years (aside from rotation of the aforementioned art) added to the beauty of it and its memories.
Shortly after my father died and my mother declared her intention to sell, Rich and I seriously considered becoming the next owners. It was a wonderful house, with terrific bones and, at the deeply discounted price, better than anything we’d ever be able to get otherwise. We went back and forth for weeks, weighing the pros and cons and finally decided that we should put it on the open market (which was just starting to slip) and pass it along to another family in the hopes that it would have a second wonderful incarnation. It sold in four days.
Fast forward to tonight. Harrison had a Bat Mitzvah party to attend at a synagogue which we used to pass every time we went to see Nanna and Poppa. As we were driving there he commented on how long it had been since we’d been down that road. I had been thinking the same thing and knew that I couldn’t turn around and not do a drive by. I had come that far…
I turned off the busy street and immediately felt that beauty and calm of the neighborhood. I noticed that one of the smaller houses at the entrance to the street had been torn down and was being replaced by a true McMansion (a tasteful one, but one nonetheless). I thought of what my father’s reaction to it would have been and chuckled to myself. It was a bit much, don’t you think? As I worked my way toward my parents’ house it felt like I had just done this drive yesterday, yet felt like I hoped I’d remember the turn. As I neared the house I slowed down, hoping, if nothing else, to get a peek in a window or maybe hit paydirt and have the new family be sitting outside “waiting” for me to drive my. Instead, as I slowed down, I noticed a woman in the kitchen looking out the window wondering why someone was creepily slowing down in front of her house. “Shit”, I thought, “now what do I do?”. So I continued to drive further down the street, turned in the next driveway and came back up to the house. Still in her window, I, without giving it any thought, parked the car and looked up to see her having opened the front door. Walking down the front walk I announced myself with my maiden name and she, phew, invited me in.
I immediately accepted and walked through the familiar door and simultaneously noticed that the foyer floor was exactly the same but the walls were dramatically different. That the stairs going up to the bedrooms were unchanged, but the now fancy cherry cabinbetted, burgundy walled kitchen was spilling out into the hall in a way that the old (and I do mean old — for as long as I can remember only one of the four stove burners even ignited) kitchen never did. And then, perhaps strangest of all, a beautiful black Lab comes bounding up the stairs. This was definitely not my house anymore.
Laura was more than happy to give me the nickel tour. As I had seen from the street, the kitchen was unrecognizable save for the bay windows which remained as we left them. No longer a kitchen only a serial restaurant diner could love, it was now highly appointed with Viking or Matador or some high end appliances I know nothing about and was one with the diningroom. Gone was the pocket door which artfully blocked off the wrappings from the Thanksgiving dinners we had brought in from local caterers replaced by a huge open space. It felt like a different house all together.
And then I circled around (remember, it always had an open floor plan) to the livingroom which is probably one of the prettiest I’ve been in for no other reason than it has an enormous picture window which overlooks woods. On a snowy day it was as close to being outside as one could ever want to be. It felt bigger and cozier now since it was being used more as a familyroom and less like a, well, livingroom. Laura opened the porch door (I knew it was really her home now because she opened the door with ease — something that took my mother years to master) which seemed larger with the glass table and chairs (and candles among the wine bottle and glasses) than it had with our furniture and picnic table (all together we were fifteen people — that picnic table came in handy!). She said they call it their million dollar room. I know why.
We worked our way downstairs and I felt a drop in my stomach when I saw that my father’s office (the one room in the house that was off limits to anyone but him) has been converted into a mudroom. It was brilliant, actually, since 99% of entry into the house was via the garage which opened directly outside his office, yet it felt somehow disrespectful. It was there that he parked his briefcase every night (outer right hand corner, and always supplied with Lifesavers Crysto-Mints – a holdover from his smoking days – a roll of stamps, UniBall Extra Fine Point Pens (in blue and red) and any papers he shuffled around at night) and sought quiet from whatever commotion was going on upstairs. It was his haven and a place we didn’t dare explore until after he had died. (And trust me, that is a whole blog entry unto itself!)
Our final stop was the lower level – a fantastic space which never realized it’s full potential when we were there. They had pulled up the green rug (when little, the grandchildren all referred to it as “the great green room” taking a page from “Goodnight Moon”), put down an ecru rug, a pool table and a kick ass, giant t.v. It was the room I always wished we’d had when I was a teenager, but whatev! As we chatted I learned, however, that they had never intended to re-do this room but were forced to. After having been away on a two week vacation to Spain, they returned to a terrible odor attached to a room full of water and mold. After learning the disappointing news that insurance would not cover it since it was ground water, they were further discouraged to learn that, under the carpet was a floor covered in asbestos. I felt my stomach drop and my face go pale…my mother, father and I (those who lived in the house the longest) had all had cancer. Suddenly my fond memories of the house went a little sour. Maybe I should have just kept driving.
