Welcome to this house, this lovely wonderful house that still feels like mine even though it is yours. Even though the rooms are now empty of everything but paint, as though I have traveled back in time twelve years to when my husband and I were just beginning the life we build in this space, imagining the years ahead with no idea what they would hold. (They held so much joy.)
I wanted to share with you a few things about this house, things that are too wordy or too silly to share through the mediator that is our realtor. Things that probably don’t need to be said – you will either find them out on your own, or they won’t matter to you one iota. But things I want to say.
I’m sorry for all the things that are wrong – it’s an old house, and it has creaks and cracks. The windows are draftier than I’d like, and I wish I’d replaced them five years ago, for you and for us. We tried our best to keep this house in good condition, and we tried to fix the things that we would want to be fixed before we moved our family into a new house. It’s amazing how you live with something for so long and it becomes invisible, or just a thing you accept as you accept the bad with the good in anything you love, like how your spouse snores when he has a cold but refuses to take cold medicine or how your best friend gets so maudlin and depressive when she watches a specific movie but still insists on watching that movie once a month at least. These little flaws are so glaringly huge now that we are turning this house over to you, and I hope they seem less huge to you, or that they disappear quickly beneath all the good this place has to offer.
Our refrigerator, as you know from the disclosures we posted, is “functional but quirky.” It probably needs to be replaced, but I couldn’t bear buying a new fridge when this one does the essentials of what a person needs a fridge to do. It holds a lot of food and it keeps things cold and it looks very lovely in the kitchen. But it is a little quite needy. I don’t envy you the mornings you’ll find the meat drawer adhered to the bottom of the fridge with ice and have to remove large chunks with a butter knife and your hands. Will I miss the little musical chortles, as the fridge asserts its presence in the household? I don’t know.
The back door sticks a little, when it’s humid.
The oven is quite slow to heat. Everything will take longer to cook than you think it will. Especially the Thanksgiving turkey. (ESPECIALLY THE TURKEY.)
The carpets are old. They were old when we moved in. We tried to take care of them, but – as you’ll note from a few bright pink splotches that no amount of scrubbing can remove – we wanted to wait to replace them until our child was old enough not to ruin new carpet, and we have not yet reached that age. Perhaps these carpets will last until your kids are that age. (Do kids reach that age? One can hope.)
These may seem like a lot of problems, but for me – and I hope, soon, for you – they are outweighed by the joy this house has brought us.
Can you hear the echoes of laughter and singing? There have been so much of both these past dozen years.
I love the big sliding glass doors in the living room, through which you and your children can watch this little pocket of nature. I’ve always marveled that so many creatures amble through the yard in our urban-edge-of-suburban neighborhood. We’ve seen opossums and raccoons, skunks and groundhogs, innumerable deer and squirrels and rabbits. There’s a chipmunk who likes to come sit on the step and contemplate the world. A red-tailed hawk that will alight on the top of the swing set and contemplate the chipmunk and its many options for dinner. Cats will wander through, sometimes yowling for some action. Very occasionally, the neighbor’s dog will escape through the hedges into this yard – a sighting which always filled my child with delight. My daughter and I spent the bulk of her first three months in front of these windows, looking outside at the grass and trees and sky, naming all the wonderful things in the world, watching squirrels tumble around in the grass and regard one another from gravity-defying positions on the trunk of the enormous backyard oak.
The primary bedroom in this house is enormous. Believe me – after looking at dozens of houses, all much bigger than this one, there are few primary bedrooms that rival it in size. The closet is vast. The ceilings soar and it had ample room for our king bed, a dresser, a couch and two armchairs. It was big enough for our whole family to gather in on lazy weekend mornings. Even among all the furniture, it can comfortably sleep a small child (or two, I assume) who won’t return to her room after a nightmare.
I will miss the light coming in through the bedroom’s east window. The way the glow suffuses the dormer first, while the rest of the room remains drowsy and dim.
You will, I’m sure, want to choose your own paint colors. But in case you like the ones we picked and painted ourselves – my husband up on a ladder, carefully filling in the walls up to the peaks of the ceilings – there are cans of paint in the basement. My daughter’s room is painted in February Frost, the softest shade of lilac. How carefully we chose that color, how deliberately we picked the furnishings and artwork for her room. The dormer is the perfect size for an armchair and a lamp, for reading Goodnight Moon and I Am a Bunny and all the exploits of Curious George. When your kids inevitably, too-speedily get older, as mine has, that space is the perfect size for a desk and chair, for schoolwork and coloring and LEGO building and playing with dolls.
The back deck gets impossibly hot in the afternoons – the sun shines directly on it. But the yard itself, with its abundance of trees, is cool in the shade. The hedges and trees make it feel like a private oasis. I hope you fill the yard, as we have, with shrieks of joy from running under the sprinklers, with iridescent bubbles and bursting water balloons, with the thwack of a badminton racket hitting the shuttlecock, with songs sung while swinging, with astonishment and awe as fireflies pinprick the dark with their bright signals.
The basement walls are red, yellow, and blue – a bold choice, I know. (And not ours.) But they grow on you. The basement itself doesn’t feel like a basement. It’s not damp or dark or creepy. It’s hosted many hours of imaginative play, overseen the conception of thousands of artworks, housed so much laughter.
In the autumn, the tree in the southwest corner of the yard bursts into the most brilliant yellow. You can see the leaves, even now, beginning to transform. I won’t get to see its exuberant celebration of fall this year. But you will, and I hope it fills you with happiness each day until the leaves fall.
The driveway and the sidewalks out front are perfect for chalk. Rainbows and body tracings and elaborate games of hopscotch.
The ice cream shop is just the right distance away for a leisurely summer stroll. As you walk, you’ll pass through the school parking lot – that’s where my daughter learned how to ride her bike; maybe your kids will learn to ride their bikes there too. We spent so many hours there, circling and circling the lot. The sports field is great for running and cartwheels and games of catch.
Keep an eye out when you drive past the school. People don’t always stop at the stop sign, even though they should.
Make sure you buy a lot (no, a LOT) of candy. Our little cul-de-sac gets a ton of trick-or-treaters. Hordes of them, surging around the block in waves. And it’s such a safe, limited trick-or-treating path for your own little ones. All the neighbors held back special treats for my daughter and she felt emboldened to go up to their stoops by herself to ask for candy.
When it snows – and it will – know that the neighbors don’t bother shoveling the sidewalks. It’s not ideal for dog walking, or accessibility, but on the plus side, there are massive hills of plowed snow for climbing and sliding down. The front yard is perfect for making angels and snow sculptures.
I know we mentioned this briefly in the list of things we love about living here, but our neighbors are truly one of a kind. Don’t think that they are intrusive or nosy – in fact, they are very good at keeping to themselves. I prefer to think of them as aware. Many of them have known each other for decades, have raised their children together. I think they want to be involved, but won’t push. It took me many years and one effusive, extroverted child to do more than smile and wave in passing. But now these kind, generous, lovely people number among my friends. S texts me long missives about her life and is interested in the minute details of mine. F has the kindest, gentlest manner, lets my daughter walk her dog, and notifies her when tadpoles have arrived in her backyard pond; she’s offered her recycling bin if we need it, her house when our power has gone out, her car when we were filling ours over and over with boxes. L is an expert gardener who shares her fresh grown tomatoes with my daughter, who taught her to love green beans and broccoli, who lets her pet and brush and pamper her dog, who always has a gentle smile and a kind word to share. R and his wife bought Girl Scout cookies every year and offered to give Carla rides to school any time we needed it. T attended my child’s school events in the absence of a grandparent, took me out for breakfast, brings us homemade cookies, runs the neighborhood block party and is irreverent and sincere in equal parts. G and C gave me baby gifts when I was pregnant and suggested babysitters when my daughter was small and C threw her arms around me when she learned we were leaving. Everyone – everyone – knows my daughter by name, keeps an eye out for her as she rides her bike, lets her join in on family games of cornhole in the front yard, welcomes her affection for their dogs (or cats). They are your neighbors now and I hope you build the same kind of relationships with them.
We planned our family here. We brought our baby home to this house. In this space, we’ve watched her grow and flourish. We have been so happy here. We hope the same will be true for you.
