I can never go back: A New House

nooccar — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 05:51:55 +0000

Ok, I think it’s time to comment on this one. One day in 1984 I was walking home from school and my parents drove by. I waved them down and hopped into the car. They told me they were off to look at houses because before that we’d been renting, and it was time to move on. We went to this three story cape code on a major highway. The former former occupant had died on the first floor master bedroom and the basement had nice wood paneling. The next day I wrote the address on my wooden desk at school. This was midyear. Within a month we were moved into this new house on Curry Hollow Road. I finished grade 4-6 at two local elementary schools and spent junior high and high school in that house. I can begin to tell you some of the stories in that house, and some others will never leave my lips. I visited home through undergrad and then moved home (into the dead lady’s room) for all of grad school. My brother has lived there for 24 years now. My sister about 20. I lived there for a good part of two decades myself. The house isn’t the largest, the yard isn’t the biggest, and it’s on a highway. In 1993 I became a man in that downstairs basement. Through the early 1990s my cousin courted his now wife and mother of 3 children while spending most weekends living in that same basement. In early 1994 I got my largest tattoo to date on my parent’s dining room table in that house. In spring of 1995 the house caught fire. The basement was destroyed, half the first floor. That same basement where I was sleeping on a December morning in 1994 when I was informed my grandmother was dead. That same house where I lay in an upstairs bedroom with fever and chills in 1988 and was shortly diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease. The house where I met with my tutors through Jr High when I couldn’t go to school. The same house from which we all three graduated from high school. The home to which my sister headed after a stint in Colorado and, years early, my brother after another in South Bend, Indiana.

My parents are getting older. Dad has bad knees (over weight, skied for four decades). Mom has bad knees (baker’s cysts), bionic hip and a terrible back (sciatic and discs). Did I mention the house has three floors? You can’t even get to the living room without going up a flight of stairs or two… and in the snow and ice, it’s even worse. They need one floor.

Now, I come to say this. It looks like I will never ever be in that house again. Never. Ever. My parents are selling it. They too are moving on like Donna and I did a decade ago. They aren’t going as far. My parents are prepared to put in a bid on a single story (with a huge basement) large home in Canonsburg, PA. We shall see if they get it.

When they talked about moving, we always told them to go for it! Curry Hollow has always been small, too small for two dogs, three children, two parents, a parade of boy friends, girl friends, friend friends, and our own families now. Mum began looking more earnestly after Christmas (now that the economy sucks and you can get a good deal); she liked the Thomas Road house, but I didn’t realize my father would run our the day after tax season to look, too. When he’s ready, my father acts quickly. Too quickly almost for me right now.

My uncle (Dad’s little brother) is in town. They all went to view this Thomas Road house yesterday, and today my parents began packing our house. Yes, Ours, still. I’ve not lived there in a decade, but I am really town now between being happy for them to have the room they need and the lack of stairs, etc… but it’s like I can never go home now. There will be nothing familiar at all with it. No sleeping on the back porch in the summer, listening to New Kids on the Block and getting my ear pierced when I was 12, or the pond where I froze my snapping turtle to death by accident. Nothing. When they say you can never go home again, now I really get it.

This feels like it’s becoming a reality. We talked about new carpets for 15 years and they are doing it now… to sell our family home. We talked about new bathroom model. Now, they are doing it. The basement acoustic ceiling has been falling down for 15 years, my uncle and brother replaced it today. Today. Took 1 day. I waited 15 years, and I will never see the ceiling, the hardwood, the paint. I will get off the plane at Christmas and go to someone’s weird unrecognizable house.

» Richard

I can never go back: A New House