I can't afford two houses. Neither my energy level nor my income will stand it. So, since my husband's death, I have had to decide whether to maintain this, the family home, or to enlarge the vacation place and move there. The latter has a lot in its favor.
But I had always thought of this big old place as the house the kids would return to in future years -- the ancestral homestead. Goodness knows, it's old enough; built in 1897. And it's big enough; two floors plus attic and basement. Standing on two lots, it has a pin oak which is among Maryland's largest... number 17, I believe. There are sycamores which do more to insulate the upstairs than I could otherwise afford.
The house has seen a lot of life, and some death. The Morans who built it used plans, apparently, much like the Sears-Roebuck type. It is like others on our street with individual changes in each.
Ours showed that when grandmother came to stay, the back porch was closed in and became the kitchen, the kitchen turned dining room and that became grandma's room with a bath added on.
That second bath did lots to sell the house to us, parents of three daughters.
Don and I had the biggest second-floor bedroom. When Rosemarie came from Pakistan to live with us, she used Kathleen's little room. Carolyn and Kathy moved into the attic, leaving Deborah to the room the two older ones had shared.
At the last of his life, Don slept on a hospital bed in the den -- the room built originally for grandmother Moran.
Don's mother had moved into that room years before, and had died there. She went quickly with a low-voiced, "I don't feel well." Her son had a longer, harder time.
Death only made that room more mellow, never threatening or sad.
I'm looking through the rooms and their contents, trying to make plans.
Where did all this stuff come from? I see items of uncertain ownership. Then I realize that our 41-year marriage was marked by a probably unusual quality. Don and I respected each other's junk. Neither criticized the other's acquisitions, nor would either of us dream of throwing out anything belonging to the other.
The result of course, is a house filled with stuff. Some of it is Junque, with use and value, but there is a lot of just plain j-u-n-k. And now, somehow, I must get it -- and me -- out of here.
I'm having to refurbish the place with plaster patches, with fresh paint on the inside, and with other kinds of cosmetology on the outside, so that a prospective buyer will be attracted to it as we were.
I remember when we first saw this house, thirty-one years ago. We were a struggling couple, thirty-something with three young kids. We had searched the suburbs for houses we could afford. Three children is not a large family, but the affordable houses were so small that we parents would be heading for the door just as our last kid came in.
The working couple was still an anomaly in the fifties. We needed schools and transportation. This complicated the search.
When we sighted this house from the front walk we saw it immediately as "ours." The price was ridiculous by today's standards. The three kids now own cars that cost more than this house did.
The owners, its second family, now moving up to newer, smaller quarters as their growing sons moved out on their own, showed us the house with pride. They had done what I now must do. They had fixed the house up fresh and gleaming.
I have fussed during the passing years because we were not keeping the house up to its peak of appearance, and now it pains me a bit to freshen it for someone else. Something perverse in me thinks: when I get it painted and beautiful, why shouldn't I stay and enjoy it?
No. People and houses need to move on. The family who buys it from me will be its fourth. It has seen children grow to adulthood, and the two deaths that I know.
The memories which reach out and touch me as I go through the rooms will always be here in my mind and heart. I must let go of their physical setting. I am alone here now. And that is not the way it should be.
The attic stair needs kids' feet clattering up and down to their eyrie where, as my eldest once said, "I live in a tree house!" The attic eaves want for the dramatizations of "Arsenic and Old Lace" with the "body" in the sun-struck window seat. The kitchen needs the scent of grilled-cheese sandwiches and fresh-poured Kool-Aid again.
There is a basement step which is hinged. Under it is a space waiting to be found by a child, and to be filled with the delighted discoverer's secret treasures.
No, when the painting and plastering are done, when I have held the greatest yard sale of all time, and moved the remaining junk to my new home, I may cry a lot. But I will let go, say good-bye to this happy old house, and move on.
P.O. Box 2309 Ocean City, MD 21842 voice 410 250 3404 fax 410 250 4967