A warm welcome back to my jan: plain and simple blog. It seems like forever since we crossed paths here on blogger.com, although I have published a few video blogs in the meantime. I’d love to learn to link them to this site to enable one-stop-shopping.
We’re all familiar with the old adage, “you can’t go home again.”
I discovered a few weeks ago that the tired cliche is spot on ... or at least it was in my case.
Last month, fate led me to drive past the original Haines Homestead: the place where we brought our brand new baby home, once upon a time. To simplify matters, this would be the house before the house before the house we live in now. We purchased it as newlyweds in 1986 as our first fixer-upper; I sold it twelve years later to begin a fresh start. We had indeed slowly “fixer-uppered” it over the years and every wall was transformed with carefully selected paint colors and wallpaper, each window adorned with hand made curtains and drapes. It had slowly evolved into an inviting, warm and pretty house.
Before walking out the door for the last time, I left a tear-stained envelope on the kitchen counter holding a welcome letter to the new owners, along with information about the home’s history I had learned from my frequent visits with our 80-year-old next-door neighbor, a lonely bachelor with whom I frequently bartered plates of leftovers for his generous supply of neighborhood legends. Included in the package were owner’s manuals for everything from the garbage disposal to the new automatic thermostat (which I gave up trying to figure out after the brains of the outfit moved out in 1995). On the day of our closing, I took one last walk-through to create a time capsule on videotape. I have never viewed the tape. We had moved on.
We promptly moved into our large Victorian in Athens, where I would spend the next fifteen years pouring blood, sweat, tears and every penny I could pinch into restoring another home. Despite knowing that this five (later six) bedroom home was simply way too much house for just the two of us, and that the home I had just sold was the perfect size for two, I had dreamed of owning this big, charming home since my aunt and uncle had purchased it 30 years before, and was thrilled for the opportunity to buy when they generously offered me first refusal. It was an awesome place for my son to grow up, with seemingly endless spaces to explore (and wallpaper, and clean, and heat) and a big back yard just begging for a in-ground pool. When my son graduated high school and left for college, I closed off the second floor and moved downstairs. The upkeep and taxes, however, were more and more difficult for a single mom to manage.
I made the decision to downsize, finding myself in 2013 as the owner in a much smaller house. I love this home’s location, living out of town while staying just within the borough limits. I have wide-open spaces, situated between two empty lots, some awesome neighbors, and quite literally LOL when I open my tax bill. This house had everything my last home lacked — new roofing, siding, furnace/central air, replacement windows, my first garage — and it is always warm and cozy. There are no sidewalks to shovel, less lawn to mow, and I have never missed the maintenance of a pool that remained empty much of the time after my son and his friends had grown.
Despite this home’s many pluses, I have not had the time, energy or finances to add my personal touch, finishing only three rooms in five years. The all-white kitchen, where I spend the vast majority of my time creating big, sloppy, colorful messes, is the bane of my OCD existence and I long for the wonderful kitchen I left behind.
But back to the story that inspired this blog post.
After discovering the “for sale” sign in front of our first house, I was unable to get it off my mind. I remembered how convenient it was to live one block from the hospital, a five minute walk from door to door. I could see the big new bathroom my contractors had built not long before I had decided to sell. I pictured my elegantly wallpapered bedroom and the coordinating curtains I had left behind. But I was mostly haunted by the memory of bringing our perfect newborn baby boy home to his picture-perfect nursery. I had a clear picture in my mind of how pretty the house was the day we left, 20 years ago, and how accomplished I had felt, having literally left my mark in every room.
Having become consumed by the possibility of returning to the house that held so many treasured memories, I contacted a real estate agent, recruited a couple very dear friends, and scheduled a tour of my former home. I prepared them and myself for the possibility that our adventure might prove to be an emotional one for me. Immediately upon walking through the door, standing in the entrance hall, my best attempts at stoicism proved fruitless, as I became overwhelmed with more emotion than I had expected. Where my friends saw a simple open staircase, I vividly saw my little boy excitedly peeking through the white balusters to see if Santa Claus had magically visited while he slept. I saw the hardwood treads I had discovered by carefully pulling up an inconspicuous corner of the ugly green carpet that had hidden them. I could hear my former husband telling me that he had driven around our street corner after a long day to discover piles of carpeting lining our curb and was “afraid to come in the house to see what you’d done now.” I saw myself carefully scraping black glue in an effort to restore the steps to their former glory. I recalled him asking me how we were expected to go up to use the bathroom or go to bed with wet polyurethane on the stairs, and his shock that in spite of my usual spontaneity, I had taken the time to think something through [for once] and had finished only every other step to avoid stranding us downstairs for the night.
I was unable to will the tears to stop and the insightful agent put her hand on my shoulder and quietly announced that she and my friends were going to step into another room “to allow you a few moments alone with your memories.” As our tour of the first floor resumed, I realized that twenty years and three subsequent owners had erased all of my personal touches and [in my opinion] their attempts at so-called home improvement had backfired.
A quick glance down the basement steps revealed little change over the years. The laundry area remained, along with the old workbench — the unlikely place where I had escaped my hyperactive toddler every Tuesday evening to reload shotgun shells for his dad’s following night’s skeet shoot. I shared with the other three ladies how I had won my argument that it only seemed fair for me to steal a couple hours’ peace down there each week while he bonded with his son above me. The rules were concise and steadfast: I was to be interrupted only in the unlikely event of traumatic amputation, profuse bleeding, respiratory arrest ... or if I heard the familiar sound of his fire department’s tones come over the scanner. It probably seems like an odd bargain to others, but it was a win-win for us. I found the repetitive task therapeutic and looked forward to my time alone in the dungeon.
Climbing the stairs to the second floor, I shared with my friends that revisiting my son’s nursery would likely be the most difficult part of the tour for me. It wasn’t. I felt absolutely no emotion as I stepped into a room that bore no resemblance to the room I had insisted we precisely replicate from the pages of a Robinson’s wallpaper catalog. Bright red [ugly] paint covers the pastel green wallpaper and coordinating border, the whimsical geese apparently having migrated. In a nightmarish redecorating theme, the two remaining bedrooms had been transformed with more paint, poorly applied over my floral wallpaper. The only recognizable room was the bathroom, frozen in time, down to the burgundy pinstriped curtains I had hung more than twenty years ago. It was glaringly obvious the curtains had been washed but not pressed, and I mentally high-fived myself for my apparently indestructible early sewing efforts.
I announced to the other three that I had seen enough, thanked the agent for facilitating my trip down memory lane, and apologized for wasting her time. She graciously reassured me that she did not view it that way at all, and understood completely that this was something I needed to do. Before leaving, she gently inquired whether my husband had passed away. When I shared that we had long been divorced, she said she had made her assumption because, “you speak of him so fondly.” I smiled and explained that was part of another deal we had negotiated for our son’s sake, and that I honestly wouldn’t have had anything negative to say even if we hadn’t struck that deal.
I said my goodbyes — to both the real estate agent and the house — and my friends and I celebrated the fact that I had finally found closure of that era of my life with a wonderful lunch date full of laughter and funny stories.
