Home At Last
My first night in my first house was nearly my last.
Overly exhausted from the stress and excitement of the move — a house and two condos into one — I couldn’t sleep. I got up in the middle of the night and hauled empty packing boxes to the basement.
On my second or third trip, I slipped and fell down the steep flight of steps.
The back of my neck grazed a concrete abutment during the fall.
As I lay on the floor at the bottom of the stairs, I immediately thought of a friend of Joanie’s who had a similar accident just weeks before. His head crashed against an abutment. He went into a coma, soon to pass away.
I was grateful to be alive. And unscathed.
I think of the moment most every time I descend those stairs. Which I approach with caution. The bottom is a sacred spot, evoking a memory, confirming I’m still around. When I survey the basement from there now, just short of two years later, I see the clutter that confirms this house is now a home.
Boxes. Tools. Dusty furniture. Paint cans labeled by room and color. More boxes from appliances long past the return date, months out of warranty. Broken window screens. Plungers. Toilet snakes. Yes, we have more than one of each. We forgot where we put them recently when their services were required so we had to go to Keith’s and get duplicates.
Suitcases with broken locks. Lamps, any of which would easily win Lynn Winter’s State Fair contest if only we took the time to enter them.
From there I can also spy the door to a little storage room where one of the previous owners has left drawers of screws and bolts and locks and such, many of which have actually been the right size for tasks around the house.
As my relationship with Joanie took hold, we started to look for a place together. She sold her manse in Prospect to a couple with young boys who thrive in the woods and the waterfall on the property. They now deal with the driving in and out of town that living a county over entails.
I loved my condo in Crescent Hill, but it was a single. Besides we wanted a place that would be ours.
So we started looking. And looking some more. We walked through a renovated Victorian on Willow which made Joanie realize she’s not a Victorian kind of gal. “Besides,” she said, “I want to renovate my way.” We checked a nifty house on one of the Highlands’ grand streets, but were taken aback by the tile swastika on the floor of the porch.
We prioritized our requirements. First floor master bedroom. Room for separate bathrooms. An open TV room adjacent to the kitchen, because that’s where guests always gather.
And, not being in a rush, we looked some more.
We wanted to stay in Crescent Hill. There’s something about living by the railroad tracks that gives that neighborhood a small town feel. We loved that there are restaurants nestled next door to tire shops. That there’s the fancy salon, Bennie and Friends, right down the street from Bennie’s Transmission. At least there used to be. The car place is RIP. We loved there wasn’t the caterwauling of Bardstown Road.
One place on Village Circle had an owner most proud of the gun room in the basement. He hurried us through the rest of the house until he could show us what he considered the piece de resistance. My guess is he celebrated the recent Supreme Court decision.
Most of the places we surveyed felt claustrophobic.
At one point, we decided to build. One of our best friends, an architect/ builder, spent months with us developing and fine tuning plans. More than a dozen set of blueprints were generated. True. Then we decided to go in a different direction. Our friendship thus survived. He built the house anyway, and a lovely, unique one it is. We have no remorse.
Because we fell in love with the house that is now our home. In the Cherokee Triangle on a bucolic street with minimal traffic and lots of trees. That some are so old they fall down during storms is part of the charm. I hold my breath every time John Belski comes on the TV and a bright red storm front is coming our way.
We’re a half block from the park.
The last owner was a card player. Bridge, I think. There’s a deep red room off the living room that is all windows. On our first walk thru, while Joanie was off in other parts of the house with our realtor, I sat in the card room with windows. It was the first time I connected with a space during the entire process.
It felt like home.
It’s now our library. We installed floor to ceiling bookshelves on the one wall that isn’t windows or a doorway.
It’s also our piano room. Joanie’s baby grand found its place. After staring at it for a year and it staring back, I signed up for lessons. Some day I shall make real music in my favorite room in my first house.
Like the rest of the interior, that room was painted. But it’s still that deep red that grabbed me on the first visit.
Before moving in, we remodeled. Walls were knocked down. Walls were added. Doors were moved. Support beams and headers were added. We were forced to bolster a support beam with steel under a second floor jacuzzi that was installed by some jackleg plumber working for the previous owner. He cut holes in the beam within a half inch of each edge. Had the bath ever been filled, it and its occupant would have ended up on the first floor.
A room in the back off the kitchen was torn down, then rebuilt correctly. We added a porch that we’re probably going to enclose. Joanie needs her own office so she doesn’t have to work out of a corner of our bedroom and she can work at her computer late even if I want to go to sleep.
We fashioned a room for Sam, Joanie’s youngest who is still in college, in what was an unfinished attic. Landmarks let us build a new garage where two cars and the usual ever accumulating garage detritus actually fit. Joanie’s studio sits above it. That’s where she paints. Unless one of her kids is visiting and cherishes the privacy out there more than hanging with parental units in the main house.
We survived the remodeling process. We’re actually friends with our contractor and his bride.
But it was not without tense moments. Like the day in the carpet store, when exasperated by what seemed to me like an overly long selection process, I plopped down in a chair. “Ah ha,” offered our salesman, “I see you’ve found the husband’s chair.” Then he regaled us with the story about a couple who’d been there the week before and gotten into an argument so severe they had to call the cops.
We survived our consultations with Bev Thigpen, Kitchen Guru. Though, truth be told, she was right about one thing. Had we placed our fridge where originally planned, it would have “stopped the flow of the kitchen.”
Joanie was right and I was wrong about some of our original wall color choices. Which we wouldn’t have discovered if she hadn’t been so adamant in the face of my resistance about testing out samples on the walls before making final decisions.
Joanie’s garden — front and back — is gorgeous. Her thumb was way green before that became the trend du jour. The lawn is small enough that I cut it in an hour or so with a manual push mower. It’s not only green , but, at my age, it’s exercise.
Now I walk the dog on our wonderful street. Our neighbors are an eclectic group. There are old couples and young couples and gay couples — male and female — and interracial couples and some weird types who live in an apartment building down the block where rent is cheap. Then there’s Todd right across the street. He introduced himself as “the only Republican on the block.”
I always stop upon return to enjoy the view of our lovely home. It’s an Arts & Crafts bungalow. Or, so I’m told. An original antique Stickley rocker sits in the living room to confirm it.
Several weeks ago, Joanie and I were married in our home. Actually in the back yard on an abysmally hot day. As soon as the service was over everybody ran inside where it was cool and one minute to post in the Belmont.
I loved that the next day, Joanie and I and her three kids — my step children — sat around in the kitchen and diner booth and ate lox and bagels and laughed and gave each other shit.
Why I never lived in a house until eligible for Social Security is an issue too lengthy to ponder in full. Maybe my parents simply couldn’t afford one. Maybe they just had a thing about ownership. Some folks do. I know I’m sad that I never got a chance to talk about it with them while they were still around. They would love the place if they were still here to visit. Their portraits hang in our bedroom.
But I love this house, my home, with all its creaks and quirks. I love that the paint on the kitchen cabinets — on which we got a great deal, by the by — is starting to chip just a bit. I love that Joanie let me place the HDTV where I wanted, where it can viewed both in the TV room and from our to-die-for 50’s diner booth with its genuine 100% virgin naugahyde upholstery. Our waste disposal can chew steel rivets without choking. That’s a good thing.
I love that Lila the Love Dog sleeps with her butt under our bed. And she gets along with all the other dogs in the neighborhood, especially Chief down the street and Gideon next door.
I am home.
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