Forever Home

It's been a little over three months now since dad passed on, and this week the realtor put the for-sale sign in the front yard of his house. 30+ years of my childhood-growing-into adulthood are on the market for any stranger to take over. There's really no other choice, and we do want it to sell, but there's a part of me that is secretly happy the housing market is so incredibly bad. Part of me that hopes we just can't sell our childhood home and we can just keep it, unchanged. Never growing old. Never dying.

All of us managed over the past few months to get the place emptied out and ready to be looked at. Furniture and items have been given away, spread around, and stored away. Boxes of books, papers and memories are stored up in Paul's mom's garage. Another house just sitting empty, with it's owner's unfortunate early demise. Carpet ripped up, drapes pulled down, and walls washed of the years of smoke. We hired some people to paint and fix and make the place look livable, and not just lived in. The new is not in yet, but we're still letting people at least have a peek and see if there's any interest in the old place.

And by old place, I really do mean old. This is the house that Craig and I grew up in, yet until we're trying to sell it, there's so much I didn't know. I knew the place was by far the oldest house in the neighborhood, and I had even heard it was once an old farm house, that is now smack dab in the middle of the city. But we found out it was actually built pre 1910, which is as far as the records go back. The house is not built with today's conveniences. It has character galore, but most people would prefer modern design. I must admit, the creaky narrow stairs that I fell down several times as a child are no luxury, nor is the fact there are 3 bedrooms upstairs and only 1 bathroom downstairs. We are trying to price it to sell, but it's a goofy old place to say the least.

There is no central air, and the place is heated by radiators in each room. We even had a wood burning stove in the living room for extra heat during those long cold winters. Wisconsin summers pale in comparasin to Arizona ones, but it does get hot and humid enough to need air conditioning as well, so big ugly window units have to make due.

Growing up, during the summers, mom always had a big garden out back, and in the fall we'd spend every weekend canning the fruits and vegetables to keep down in the basement cellar. With the economy as bad as it is, I'm so grateful for our survival training childhood! You never know how much of it we'll need to get back to in the upcoming years. Even the plants of our childhoods are still growing around the house, in the same places we planted them. Dad never had the heart to kill off the tiger lilies that took over the side of the house each year, or the ivy that grew all over the house so much, the place practically looked abandoned by fall. I bet if we looked hard enough, we'd even find some tart rhubarb plants still growing by the garage.

There is no point in living in the past, but it is fun to remember the good times. I hope a new family moves in and can start new memories of their own.