Vacant

If you were to ask me if I had a baby other than my three kids, I would tell you that I most certainly did and it was the house Mark and I bought 34 years ago. Months after moving to the Midwest from the DC area, where buying a house seemed to be for those with very high incomes or an inheritance, we’d get the Sunday paper, open up the classified section, map out scheduled open houses, pile our two kids into the car, and imagined one day owning a home of our own. The kids would claim bedrooms they’d never live in because we were as far from being homeowners as one could get on an annual income of $41,000.

But that was 1992 and we would find out that there were loan programs for 1st time home buyers with good credit and not much to put down. After getting very close to commiting to a split-level, we went a week later to another open house (this one for sale by owner) and found exactly what we were looking for – a four bedroom cape cod built in 1949 in a tree lined neighborhood with a shopping center we could walk to and a gang of young kids up and down the street. The next day we put an offer in and couldn’t believe it was ours. Two years later another baby arrived and our four bedrooms were full.

As older homes go it had its share of problems and no repair was easy. Often it involved undoing the sins of previous owners who either didn’t do it correctly or didn’t have access to newer options. It became my playgound of creativity and I was always tinkering with it – painting, moving furniture or flipping rooms, and desperately trying to make its tiny kitchen function better for five people.

Several years after we moved in I found someone (the classified ads again) who was a landscape architect. For $250 she drew us a plan in colored pencils for the front and side of the house that took us ten years to complete. It would have been much sooner had we had money to spare but we didn’t so it was the two of us trying to make the hardest, rockiest dirt ever suitable for plants, searching nurseries and home improvement stores for evergreens and small trees we could afford, setting them in the ground, mulching, watering, watering, watering, and turning it over to the landscape gods to deliver. They did and when we finally finished the English garden I imagined I was so proud every time I pulled into the driveway. With sweat equity, aching muscles, and dirt imbedded in our fingernails we had pulled it off.

Life ebbed and flowed in that house. Our kids left for college leaving their rooms empty and then came back for a time before launching off on their own. When it was time for Mal to make her move to California, she stood in the driveway for a long while. I asked her if she was okay and she said, “I just want one long look before I go.” The full nest emptied out for good and then a granddaughter arrived. How had time moved so fast?

And then tragically there was the day that Mark left it for the last time, getting on his bike and pedaling to his death. I often wondered if he looked back that morning as Mallory had done years earlier. Did he see all that we built together, the twenty one boxwoods that were miniscule when we planted them and were now big and full like our lives? Did he take it all in and have second thoughts? That is my own wishful thinking as the mind of someone planning their death is only working towards ending their pain. Those boxwoods, hostas, and hydrangeas that had made it through thick and thin were no match for what was happening within his own brain.

Two years ago I moved in with Michael and Will moved into the house he grew up in. He started with a partner and a few months later was on his own like I was after his dad died, picking up the pieces and trying to figure out how to move forward. The suburban life wasn’t for him and after a long search for a loft apartment in the city, he found what he was looking for and moved out last week. As luck would have it, a dear friend of Mark’s was in town last fall and looking to move back to the area. When he was over for a drink, I said my house might be available in the spring and he jumped at the chance.

For the last two weeks I have been moving things out of the house that I never dealt with when Will moved in. I have had nearly every room repainted and the hardwood floors have been refinished. Yesterday when it was okay to walk on them again, Maggie and Will met me over there – the rooms vacant like the day we closed and got the keys. Every morning for two weeks I would bring the two of them and a car full of boxes that I would unpack while they would run through every room and up and down the stairs over and over. When Mallory arrived she would join in the mix of squeals, tears, laughter, and arguing that filled every corner of that house.

A few years ago I asked Will if he would want to buy it if I ever decided to sell it. “I don’t think so,” he said, “I think maybe we should turn it over to another family to love it like we did.” I’m still not ready to do that but I am turning it over and, whew, it’s been emotional. Yesterday Maggie got there before Will and I did and was in tears which I have been a time or ten these last few weeks.

“It was a good house for me to heal in,” Will told me after he made the decision to leave it. For a long time after Mark died I hated to come home to the hollow, lonely place that had always been so full of warmth and love. That slowly subsided as I began the very rocky process of building a new foundation. In time it became my safest haven again and I swear there’s some kind of magic within its walls. I knew it the minute we walked into it and whispered to Mark in the upstairs hallway, “This is it. This is the one,” and he whispered back “I think so too.” We played it cool and told the owner we’d have to think about it then got in the car and told the kids it was their new house before we had even pulled away. And while we didn’t live there happily ever after, we got to live there happily for a very long time, loving and being loved back by a sweet, old cape we found in the Sunday paper.