This Old House-Part 1

I usually write with my computer on my lap, often huddled in a corner, late at night, trying not to bother anyone else whose brain does the normal thing at night—shut down. Mine comes alive, when the distractions of the day have subsided, when there isn’t anything to clean, something to cook, someone to feed, something to organize, an appointment to be made—or kept. But  this piece is being written somewhere new, yet old and familiar to me. I am sitting at the kitchen table in the house where I grew up, the house my family purchased from the original owners in 1968, four months after our somewhat abrupt move from California to the Midwest. It was the first time I remember having strong, conflicting emotions—sorrow over what I had lost and joy for what I had gained—and these very same emotions are washing over me yet again.

I loved being a California girl, and have often joked that I lived in a warm climate just long enough for my body to think it must ALWAYS be warm.  Being born in Roseville, a suburb of Sacramento, I spent my earliest years in Madera, but in 1965, we moved into a brand new house on Lycoming Street in Walnut, California, outside of Pomona. Our weekend outings consisted of trips to the beach, to the mountains, and frequently, to the desert to pick up rocks for a retaining wall and barbecue pit my father built at my mother’s request. Memories of these adventures exist in flashes of remembrance, and probably gave birth to my love of travel. But the love of my family within the four walls is what I remember not in flashes, but in a vision so clear and steady, that it runs like a movie through my memory.

If asked, I could draw a floor plan of that house, tell you where the blue sculpted carpet stopped and the tile started, what the sliding glass doors sounded like (and how much effort they took for my slight body to open), where the yellow kitchen table sat and what the split in the vinyl on the chair felt like on the back of a bare thigh, what the view was as you looked out over the dining room into the oh-so-sixties sunken living room, how the door to my parents’ room (a first floor master) looked when slightly ajar (and how close you could get to it without being seen), what the gathered sheer curtain panels at the base of the stairway felt like as you pushed them aside to see who was ringing the doorbell. I can still feel the effort it took for my scrawny legs to walk up to the second floor, the sharp left turn you took to get to the room I shared with my sister, and across the hall, my big brother’s inner sanctum, where I was allowed only when taking a nap while he was at school—I assume because his room lacked the distraction of my extensive doll collection—and how my face felt after taking my nap on his bed, his corded bedspread leaving deep creases on my cheek. There was another room that we used as a den which had sliders on a track that could subdivide the room (another 60s innovation). I never questioned why I shared a room with my sister—looking back, it was probably for my mother’s peace of mind, hoping the presence of another human would ensure my safety, or at least discourage my wandering off in the middle of the night. Little did she know that my sister is virtually impossible to wake once she has fallen asleep, but four years of sharing a bed with someone sets you up for needing to find a life mate who doesn’t mind a body plastered up against them.

So it was with some trepidation that I suddenly acquired a bedroom of my own. I was already a little shaken from our recent unplanned move over the summer. My mother, my siblings and I had boarded the train in California and set off for our annual trip to the Midwest to see family. Both of my parents are from Northwest Missouri, so vacations consisted of trips back to Missouri to see them. In fact, the idea of going somewhere on vacation to simply SEE somewhere was completely foreign to me. I remember a grade school chum talking about their summer vacation to Montana, and I asked which set of grandparents lived there. I was aghast to find out that they had no family in Montana, they had gone to just to see it!

We usually drove our car on these annual trips, discussing at length which route to take. I always voted for the southern route through New Mexico, but my mother usually prevailed with her preferred route through the mountains of Colorado. That summer of ’68, we left my father behind, and boarded an Amtrak which much to my delight, took the southern route. My father would join us later in the summer, so I waved to him from the window as the train pulled out of the station and settled down next to my mom who had already begun to work on the sewing she brought with her—a pale yellow frock she was making for me. I remember watching her take those tiny stitches as she carefully attached a row of daisy appliqué trim to the waist, and then bouncing back to the window to monitor the ever changing landscape as we raced eastward to Kansas City.

Our destination, following our arrival at Union Station, was my grandparents’ two-story house at 2424 Kensington. My memories of that house begin not with summer vacations, but with a trip in the winter of 1965 for my first wedding where my Aunt Judy, my mother’s youngest sister, married my dashing Uncle Fred. My grandfather was the custodian at Kensington Avenue Baptist church where my soon-to-be Uncle Fred’s father was the pastor. My grandmother was a phone operator at Macy’s downtown, and she walked to the corner bus stop to catch the bus to work, another exciting routine that was foreign to me. When visiting during the summers, I would anxiously await her return, meeting the bus down at the corner, and chattering all the way back to the house. Although I’m sure her day had been filled with an endless stream of voices, she was always an eager listener for whatever I said—or sang—to her. We would climb the steps to a vast front porch painted with gray paint so thick that you could leave the imprint of your thumb in the heat of summer. Facing east, it was a grand place to spend summer afternoons and evenings, swinging on the porch swing or sitting on the broad steps, anticipating the arrival of the ice cream man, straining to hear his bell. Details of that house too, are seared into my memory—the leaded glass panels of the built-in bookcases that flanked the fireplace, the feel and smell of the mauve sectional in the front room (a beloved piece that I acquired in adulthood), the large, slightly out of tune upright piano in the back room, the smells emanating from the tiny kitchen—Sunday dinner’s roast, summer’s pickles, Saturday’s communion bread. Exploring the basement was not forbidden but neither was it encouraged—the creaky steps leading down to the musty damp cellar made it difficult to descend undetected, but I loved to sneak down and watch my grandpa clean the lint trap on the dryer, meticulously using a paint brush, allocated specifically for this purpose. The other set of stairs in the house led to the second floor and the walls of this stairway were a relative who’s who in our family. School pictures, wedding photos, and professional portraits kept our family together in one place, though we were spread from coast to coast thanks to three uncles who were serving in the military. The gallery grew over the years, but  I remember a large portrait of my cousin Sheri, somewhere between baby and toddler, placed prominently in the middle of the wall, grinning cheerfully in a beautifully hand tinted portrait where the artist had mistakenly given her brown eyes instead of blue. At the top of the steps, I always paused to gaze at the glossy black and white modeling composite of my Aunt Judy, looking like a cross between Twiggy and Barbara Feldman.

The second floor held its own delights—a tiled bathroom that smelled of Lava soap, White Shoulders, and baby powder with a bath tub large enough for three cousins at a time; a bedroom with a door in the wall the revealed a small collection of the treasures of yesteryear; and two other bedrooms, one of which you had to walk through to get to the other. It was this back bedroom where I usually played and slept, a finished sunporch with wall to wall windows that housed a sturdy bed and dresser antiqued white with streaks of gold. My favorite pastime in this room was jumping on the bed, another activity that was neither forbidden nor encouraged, but one which became significantly less attractive after landing spread eagle, face down on the bed, my nose hitting the solid footboard hidden by the gold and white quilt appliquéd with, ironically, an American eagle.

I loved that house on Kensington, and when my father arrived from California and announced that he had found a job here and that we were going to stay, my dismay at not telling any of my friends in California good-bye dissipated, replaced by the anticipation of living closer to our extended family year ‘round. Although I hated leaving my grandparents’ house, I was delighted with the new home my parents agreed upon following a rather challenging three-month stay in an apartment. Only a fifteen minute drive to my grandparents’ house, our ‘new’ house, although not as old as my grandparents’ house, possessed some of the familiar elements that made it feel like home—a set of rickety basement stairs leading down to the laundry room, a screened-in porch that stretched across the back of the house, and a stairway leading to the second floor where my mother immediately began creating our own family gallery. The backyard, though somewhat larger, was similarly shaded by trees, one of them an apple tree whose produce, though somewhat small and wormy, played second fiddle to its low branches which provided ample climbing opportunities. The concrete steps leading from the porch to the yard created a secret hideaway with a dirt floor and slanted ceiling, camouflaged by spirea bushes which produced miniature bridal bouquets of white blossoms perfect for Barbie doll weddings or freshly made mud pies.

The new element for me here was my own bedroom. While my then-twelve-year old sister was, I’m sure, delighted to have HER own room, I was less enthusiastic. My mother attempted to make the proposition more attractive by allowing me to decorate—and redecorate–the room over the next five years. The only nonnegotiable was that I must have a full-sized bed so that company would have somewhere to sleep when visiting, as my sister possessed the coveted twin bed. The pepto-bismol pink walls in my room were made more palatable by a fluffy while bedspread embroidered with pink roses, but my inner decorator really emerged full force during my yellow and orange daisy phase in the early 70s. My mother papered my room with brightly colored orange and yellow flowered wallpaper, and over my bed, a poster of a young girl holding a flower in the middle of a field proclaimed “TODAY IS THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF YOUR LIFE”. But no amount of wallpaper and posters made up for the fact that I was sleeping in a big bed, alone, and I would often creep into my sister’s peaceful room, awash in shades of lavender, and curl up on the floor at the foot of her bed. I was prone to nightmares and sleepwalking, so when my brother grew up and moved away five years later, I was given his room upstairs where I was less likely to wander out the front door undetected.

Thus began my pioneer phase with white curtains, a crazy quilt lovingly made for me by my grandmother and a braided rug on the floor. While I made do with my yellow painted Jenny Lind bed for a while, my aunt contributed her cannon ball bed which became a major set piece in the literary reenactments that filled my days. Perched on the footboard, I drove my horses across the endless prairie, and although the small window in one end of the room let in a minimal amount of sunlight compared to my downstairs bedroom, the dramatic slant of the ceiling more than made up for it. Better yet, the room was on the other side of the house, closer to my next-door neighbor, my buddy Greg, and the houses were close enough together to be connected by orange juice can telephones.

But always the traveler up for a new adventure, I was game when my mom suggested the she and my dad switch rooms with me. My brother’s old room, which I had been inhabiting, was at the top of the stairs, and my mother’s ever present anxiety convinced her that I was bound to wander down the stairs in my sleep sooner or later. If we changed rooms, she would at least hear me as I passed their door on the way down. Of course, the move required new wallpaper and by this time, I was earning some money babysitting and offered to help pay for it. I had discovered that money gives you more power in the decision making process, and by now, I had progressed from the LITTLE HOUSE books to LITTLE WOMEN. We had also recently visited the abandoned house on my father’s family farmland, and I was intrigued by the old wallpaper in the house, particularly the upstair bedroom. When it came time to select a pattern for my new room, it is no surprise that I chose an old-fashioned pattern of roses, ribbons, and lace arranged in neat vertical rows (making the process somewhat challenging due to the inconsistent lines of an older house). My bed changed once again, a depression era paneled bed, found in an antique store in Savannah by my dad. An eyelet comforter, my sister’s old dresser and an old cedar chest in a similar finish given to me by my other grandma completed the nest where I stayed for the remainder of my years under my parents’ roof.

For the next thirty years, this house continued to be home, even when not living there. The inhabitants of the bedrooms and their function continued to change as family members and friends came and went. My old room at the top of the stairs became my son’s room when he stayed almost every weekend and as much of the summer as he could get away with. The two rooms where my sister and I first acquired separate quarters became new living quarters for my grandmother after my grandfather passed away, and our home became the new gathering place for holidays. When she left this earthly home to join my grandfather, my mother became the new matriarch, and every Thanksgiving and Easter, the aunts and uncles and cousins continued to gather with their expanding families. But the house grew older, I grew older, and then suddenly, my parents grew older, old enough for the stairways we once loved and the space we once craved to become an obstacle to their daily life. Suddenly moving my parents out of the house seemed like more than any of us could fathom, so my husband and I sold our house, found an apartment for my parents down the street from my sister and brother-in-law, and moved back into my childhood home to begin the long slow process of sorting through forty-five years of their lives, so intertwined with ours.

(To Be Continued…)