How A House Says Goodbye

They tried to gently discourage us from the little stone-front, two-story home built in 1920. It stands in a neighborhood generally looked up to by the downtown homeless and somewhat looked down upon by everyone else in the area. But the arch doorways, the woodwork and Victorian wallpaper border swept me in. The green, brown and cream bathroom (recently updated, of course) and vinyl blue and white wallpaper in the kitchen didn’t even faze us. “We’ll get around to changing those soon enough,” we reasoned.

Days after our return from our honeymoon, my new husband carried me over the threshold, and we began to move in. The appliances were all left with the house, which is a great bonus to two broke newlyweds. We found the inside of them covered with dog hair, so we got to work scrubbing and vacuuming.

It was always supposed to be our starter home. You know, the one we start fixing up to sell when the first kid comes along. But she came and the house stayed. And each of her three brothers came, and the house stayed. The youngest approached 10 years old, and we were still there. The six of us, crowded into the 2-bedroom, 1,040-square-foot house.

This house became a metaphor for my life. I wanted to rush ahead to a bigger, nicer home in a better area where my friends didn’t look at me in polite pity when I gave them my address or had them over.

I also wanted to rush ahead when my firstborn was screaming in colic, when my third child refused to potty train, when my baby was covered with cracking, bleeding eczema and when my second child threw up every Monday for weeks for no apparent reason. When our money was tight, I wanted to rush ahead to more money. When we had money, I wanted to remodel the bathroom. Then the basement would flood again, and it all went to that. For too many years, I looked forward to when we would finally be in our forever house.

But our starter house became our home for 22 years. And when we got the paper in the mail that it was finally ours, I realized that I’d taken it for granted for way too many of those years. Its gentle embrace was always there. It held us up, supported us and sheltered us over many years, during the lovely days and the lonely nights.

When the place became ours, I walked through the arched doorways differently. Especially today–moving day. We have a new house waiting for us. Yet, after so many years of looking to the future, I’m looking back a bit more now.

I see the living room, so aptly named. This is where our first newborn arrived and promptly spit up the entire contents of her bottle on the newly installed carpet. Then, the three of us cried together and wondered how we were going to do this family thing. We sat around this room on Sunday nights, chomping on sandwiches after church. We grieved the loss of our first pet here while pizza cooled, uneaten. Little boys with makeshift baseballs played catch here. Dozens of piano students have sat on the piano bench here, including my four favorites that live here. Friends and family have sat around the room, pulling chairs from the dining room.

Ah! The dining room. It sounds so much more formal than it is. For years, a wall map and white board covered the wall next to the curio cabinet. It housed bookshelves instead of a china hutch. The dining table, a gift from my late grandmother, is pocked with pencil marks from 14 years of homeschooling. We’ve shared many meals around this table, including both fancy Valentine dinners and leftovers on paper plates.

The kitchen wallpaper is changed but peeling again. The sprayer at the sink doesn’t work anymore, and you have to be careful not to bump the pipe under the sink the wrong way or it will empty into the cabinet….again. The lath in the ceiling is showing because there’s a leak somewhere between the upstairs and kitchen that can only be fixed with a complete (expensive) remodel. One handle keeps falling off the kitchen cabinet, but all of us are pretty quick about catching it. It’s kind of a game. The same appliances that were here 22 years ago are still going strong. Off the kitchen is the little breakfast nook that later served as my husband’s office when he started his own business.

The basement door is in the kitchen. My husband removed the door knob years ago because I kept forgetting he was down there when locking up at night. There is a back door off the basement steps. It no longer has glass in it since an over-zealous child took out the trash and knocked it out with a shoulder on his way. Stitching up that arm cost enough to forego replacing the glass.

At the top of the steps is the bathroom. The green tub is still there: the one I bathed all my children in until these last too many years when they can do it very well themselves. It also doubles as a sink since the leak problem in the kitchen somehow originates from the bathroom sink and can’t be used without creating a deluge in the wrong places.

Across the hall from the bathroom are the two bedrooms. Our kids’ room used to be the master bedroom, but after three kids came along, we decided they needed the space more than we did. We did make it kid-friendly when the three of them took over the room. It still has a sky blue ceiling with painted clouds and a sloping, green chalkboard wall. Our now-teenagers greatly enjoy the décor. We have pried a multitude of splinters from feet and fingers because of the original pine floor in this room. So many nights in the dark, the wide cracks between the planks brought me to tears after a child had been sick from the top bunk.

Our bedroom was my sanctuary from the noise and chaos of years of mothering. Even among the mid-century bed, dresser and nightstand I inherited from my grandfather, I was peaceful here. Way back before kids, it was our spare room. Visits from guests were few and far between, so when we were too broke to get away for a night, we’d take an overnight visit to our spare room. It felt luxurious even though it was less than 5 feet away from our master bedroom.

They say, “If walls could talk…”, and I would love to listen to them for a while. Today, as I walk through the empty rooms, I think I hear the cries of newborns, the shrieks of toddler laughter, the whispers of late night talks with teens, the raised voices and the subsequent apologies, the loud discussions, the quiet snuffling of tears after a long day, and the faltering music of the piano. I hear the thumping feet of a rebellious student, the whining fuss of a toddler clutching my skirt, the clinking shatter of a broken window and the gasp of the offending child who was only trying to play. I hear every stage of my name, whispered and called out in these walls: “Honey? Babe? Ma! Mama! Mommy! Moooooooom!”

Our new house will have space. It will have closets, sinks that work, a game room that isn’t sub-zero in the winter and a bedroom that doesn’t remind one of the Sahara in the summer. It’s brand new with no peeling wallpaper, lath showing through or crumbling paneling. It’s in a neighborhood where one hears a popping sound and assumes it’s a car backfiring rather than a gunshot. There will be a garage and a concrete driveway. All the things I’ve looked forward to for over two decades.

I’m thrilled….really, I am. I amazed at God’s provision, and I look forward to it all. But when I walk in, and put my ear up to the freshly painted walls with no dings or scuffs, I’m afraid the silence will deafen me.

Thanks for reminiscing with me. Although, I don’t feel lost in the world like the singer expresses since I walk with Jesus, I could relate to the memories of this song.