Posted on 04/18/2018 7:08:10 PM PDT by Skooz
In September 2001, I bought the lot, covered in trees and so thick with brush you couldn’t walk through it. I cleared the land myself. We built the house in 2002, moving in on Labor Day. The columns on the front porch were my ex-wife’s excellent idea.
My father died four days after we moved in and I never got to show it to him.
My oldest daughter, age 11 when we moved here, entered adolescence and then womanhood in this home. I met her nervous first dates on that porch.
When my youngest daughter was born, I carried her through that door two days later. Her first steps were in the living room; she read her first words in the kitchen. She spoke her first words, I think, in her bedroom. That’s it behind the middle dormer.
We have played, oh, about 3 million hours of board games on her carpet.
The Best Dog Ever is buried in the back yard, under a branch that somehow sprouts flowers every winter.
I’ve spent numberless hours making this house a home; laying the flooring, installing fixtures, chopping down trees, planting trees, clearing brush, building a fence, painting, painting, painting. I spent two winters crawling under it, installing insulation. My blood is in this place.
Three hurricanes have pounded that roof. I went through three chainsaws cutting down trees. In May 2009, by myself, I built a deck in the back. It’s 16‘ X 24’ and I think it’s pretty nice.
I lived almost 1/3 of my life here, longer than I have lived anywhere else. The best days and worst days of my life I spent here; from days of rapturous, transcendent blissful happiness to days of crippling, heart-wrenching, despair – these walls have seen it all.
I lived here married, lived here through a divorce, lived here as a newly liberated newly single man. Here, hope has gone full circle: The sun rose, set, took its sweet time traversing the other side of the globe, then rose again – right on time – brighter than ever.
I’ve been trying to sell this place for years. The reasons we built here (proximity to my ex-wife’s job and eldest daughter’s school) have long ago run their course. Neither live here anymore.
But, now that I’m moving, my mind is filled with reasons to miss the old place. To underscore that refrain, the most amazing wisteria explosion on earth, which covers the vacant lot next door every March, just came into full bloom yesterday. I always open the windows and let the fragrance waft through the house. There is nothing like it. Nothing.
I’ve prayed for a new house and God answered right on time. I’m grateful. But, a large part of my heart will always be within these walls, wandering the huge back yard, crawling around the attic.
It’s a high maintenance house and I lack the time to provide the attention it needs. My new home is much more practical. I suppose it’s something like going from a turbulent, passionate affair to something more stable and comfortable.
It’s time to move. I’m looking forward to it.
The new owners are CRAZY about it. They are a young husband and wife with a precious toddler girl.
The wife told me they had been wanting to buy the house for over a year, but couldn't afford it. When they finally had the money, they checked again and were surprised it was still for sale. They made an offer and the rest is history.
He is a true handy man, something I most assuredly am not. I dropped by a few days ago to pick up my mail and they were hard at work; repainting every room, cleaning carpets, painting the cabinets -- making it their home.
When I left I had the feeling that the house was built for them and I was just the custodian until they came along.
Great post!
Bookmark
I’ve either been blessed or cursed with an utter lack of introspection.
We’ve had three houses over the past 31 years.
31st anniversary is next Thursday but I will be gone on a business trip. Celebrating tonight)
Whenever we move out, it’s just an opportunity to move on.
None of the homes had any real character, especially the one we’re in now. It’s really just a house.
Best memories was probably the last one. We had to move when I lost my job during the Michigan depression and had to move out of state. Lost our shirts but managed to sell it.
We were having a graduation party at our last house for one of my kids. I walked out front to get something and some guy in a Jeep was just staring at my house. I finally asked if he needed something. He told me that his parents built the house and he lived there several years.
I invited him in to take a walk around.
Great story - makes me think of the many houses I have seen/been in that make me say “I wish these walls could talk”...
A song for you.....
The House That Built Me
Miranda Lambert
I know they say you can’t go home again.
I just had to come back one last time.
Ma’am I know you don’t know me from Adam.
But these hand prints on the front steps are mine.
Up those stairs, in that little back bedroom
Is where I did my homework and I learned to play guitar.
And I bet you didn’t know, under that live oak
My favorite dog is buried in the yard.
I thought if I could touch this place or feel it
This brokenness inside me might start healing.
Out here it’s like I’m someone else,
I thought that maybe I could find myself
If I could just come in I swear I’ll leave.
Won’t take nothing but a memory
From the house that built me.
Mama cut out pictures of houses for years.
From ‘Better Homes and Garden’ magazines.
Plans were drawn, and concrete poured,
And nail by nail and board by board
Daddy gave life to mama’s dream.
I thought if I could touch this place or feel it
This brokenness inside me might start healing.
Out here it’s like I’m someone else,
I thought that maybe I could find myself.
If I could just come in I swear I’ll leave.
Won’t take nothing but a memory
From the house that built me.
You leave home, you move on and you do the best you can.
I got lost in this old world and forgot who I am.
I thought if I could touch this place or feel it
This brokenness inside me might start healing.
Out here it’s like I’m someone else,
I thought that maybe I could find myself.
If I could walk around I swear I’ll leave.
Won’t take nothing but a memory
From the house that, built me.
Songwriters: Allen Shamblin / Tom Douglas
My wife and I bought our home in 1983. We raised our family there. We moved out in 2016 after 33 wonderful years. We still own the house, but it is now a rental. But Oh! The wonderful memories and stories I could tell you.
But I’ll just tell you this recurring dream I have. I dream that our family is back in that house. We are in the dining room or the living room or wherever. And all of a sudden I start to panic. I realize we don’t live here anymore and the tenants will soon come in and catch us in their house and so we must get out! Quick!
~end of dream~
Oh, Skooz, that was for Pelham who lives in SOCal like me. He knows what vacant lots in this place look like. Yours sounds like a little meadow.
This sounds imminently like my story. I bought land (8 1/3 acres), and two days later met a woman who would become my wife, and the mother of my three daughters. 15 years later, I moved out, in the hopes of getting her attention, to “shock” her into communicating with me, talking with me. It didn’t happen, and we’re divorcing now. My youngest has footprints and handprints in the foundation on the back porch corner. My dad moved in when he (shortsightedly) sold his house 7 years ago. Jam, litter mate of Jelly, is buried in the front yard. Manning, my dog from before the wife and kids, is buried under the pecan tree in the front yard. Toby, a cat from before, is buried under the live oak in the back.
We’ve been through a couple of hurricanes, and 3 straight years of floods with no damage. Had the wellhead knocked over by a guy doing some mowing. Even had the septic tanks pumped out. Built a Quonset hut barn. Spent way too much on trees that never got planted, and railroad ties to line the 600 foot driveway that never quite got fully lined.
And, all I want to do is sell the place. I’ll have the memories, but miss the people that made it home for 15 years. I won’t miss the slow decay of my marriage.
To all things there is a season.
Most of the buildings I lived in during my life have been TORN DOWN. What does it mean?
Thanx 4 sharing. Brought tears to these old eyes, remembering similar circumstances.
I know how you feel. I moved from our “home” for 7 generations, NW Florida, to Georgia, last summer. I had never lived anyplace else. It has been traumatic but I am adjusting....you will too.
Best wishes.
Maturity has arrived like a bus at your stop and you have climbed aboard.
Bookmark
Well, take this:
I watched this a few days before moving. Bad move. :)
A beautifully written, poignant piece. Thanks for adding some sorely needed quality content to FR.
I used to do that when I was young, but as I grew older, it became more and more of an emotionally 'triggering' thing to do.
I can pass by the old rentals we lived in without feeling a twinge of anything, but there's just something about the houses we owned, that sets me off.
I guess in my mind, they still feel like 'my' house.
I understand what y’all say. My family lived in one house from 1919 to when I sold it around 2005. When I revisited Houston, I stayed at a house across the street and couldn’t look at my old home once I knew the new owners had gutted the inside of a classic Craftsman house and modernized it.
Having said that, when it came up for sale, i wasn’t tempted. In fact when I returned to Texas from California I chose Dallas, not Houston. You can’t go home again.
Stop. You're making me tear up for our old house in Compton.
Mom sold the house in 1975, but I remember planting the little palms and Joshua trees in the front yard with her when I was seven or eight.
Those trees towered over the house by the time it sold. Years later, I drove by, and the owners had cut them all down. I almost cried.
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