write a story visit to old family house
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✏There is no way for me to prove, regretting now I never kept a journal of my 22 winters here in Chicago so I could point to a notation on a page, yes this is definitely the earliest I've ever seen bees. It was March 7th when I muddied my knees to take this photo, the ground still not frozen and no crusty inches of dirty snow creating havoc for crocus shoots struggling to make their stand instead in full bloom now in swaths across front yard lawns everywhere. So many purple and orange reasons to be cheerful under clear blue skies after weeks of uninterrupted sun incubating their arrival, stirring expectations of long lazy days that start warm and end warmer. A short sleeve shirt and moist sweaty skin a prescription for anything that ails me, the six month unwelcome and emotionally debilitating hibernation of winter as I experience it and have learned to dread, the sunless skies, the grey after clouded over grey never came to be this year, my body and psyche so grateful for the unexpected reprieve.
What seems like a life ago now on a rainy wind whipped March afternoon so unlike this one, after all the boxes were emptied and flattened and the furniture finally placed in the rooms of my first ever house, weather I would normally make every excuse to not experience, grousing, instead had me out walking every inch of the expansive yard and staring wide eyed at this house I now lived in. The narrow, two story wood framed design would be considered common except for the carefully hand carved wooden plackets above the window and door casings their trim painted a deepforest green, the uneven hand troweled stucco softly texturing the entire two stories capped by an impossibly steep roof and worn brick chimney listing slightly, so reminiscent of a little farmhouse you might encounter hiking deep in the rural hills of a northern European countryside, nestled in a shallow surrounded by rolling green grass hills with livestock lazily grazing their days away.
These romantic images filled my head standing shivering againt the January wind waiting for the realtor to arrive, looking at this house for the very first time. This vivid imprint remained even as she apologized for the rundown condition of the exterior, the smallish rooms and the absense of any modern amenities most people are accustomed to expect in a house these days, her rehearsed pitch predicting a reaction she wasn't getting. She struggled in her high heels as we walked a worn grass path to the two story building hundreds of feet away from the house built not for cars but a horse drawn carriage, the two huge wooden doors swung out as she promised it wouldn't take much to build a new garage with a spiffy remote control door. Surprised herself, her eyebrows arched quoting from the listing sheet she dated the house to 1908, then waving her handful of other pages so sure I now wanted to see the rest of the houses on her list, she turned and began her torturous walk back through the frozen grass. I however was more interested in the rolling gravel back alley that I found out was the only one in the entire town, it paralleled an embankment choked thick with trees and messy underbrush that the kid in me just needed to climb, the realtor now dumfounded. I carefully navigated the steep incline and reached the top, shouting up at me that the freight train rarely came through this set of tracks anymore and it rumbled through slowly and quietly when it did her trained enthusiasm waning as the words left her lips.
A house filled with so many potential dealbreakers is a realtors' nightmare and this house had languished for so long in a white hot market there was no longer a for sale sign out front, it became the classic drive by, the office joke, an oddball, a fixer upper that no one could see the value in repairing and few realtors had any interest in ever showing prospective buyers.
Much to my agents' astonishment and more than a little of my own, I bought the house that day.
This committed city dweller who walked asphalt and concrete and rode elevators and subways and rented apartments his entire adult life was about to get quite the unexpected education in home ownership. A lifetime spent building and renovating I was prepared for the fixer upper but spring was threatening its' arrival and as the dormant winter landscape would tranform itself, much to my surprise so would much of my life.
I was 36 and sadly never held a spade or put a plant in the ground.