More Stories - The House

by Kelly Reale

Things were going along swimmingly for my brother and me at the ages of 10 and 8, respectively. Then, our parents bought “The House.”

We were living in a fairly new, all-electric contemporary house in 1977, when one Sunday on the way back from church my parents casually mentioned that we were going to look at a house out in the country. Dave and I were sort of used to this kind of riding around with my parents, listening to unproductive talk about moving and houses. But, since there didn’t seem to be an IBM-related move attached to it, the talk didn’t have any sense of reality for me. In my young life, I couldn’t fathom why anyone would move unless it was for IBM. I probably thought that everyone’s father worked for IBM.

So we pulled up to this big old farm-house (my parents description), which looked like something that no one I knew would EVER consider living in. It was enormous, it was old-fashioned and most of all, it was absolutely the color of urine. Clearly, there was a sale on yellow paint some years back and the owners could only afford enough paint for one coat, which didn’t quite cover the darker green underneath.

I remember this day vividly….sort of like other people say that they remember where they were and what they were wearing when they heard that Kennedy had been shot. I was wearing an orange top with these god-awful white, blue and orange striped gauchos. This was the 70’s and I was 8 years old, so I blame my mother completely for this outfit! I don’t remember what Dave was wearing but I remember the stunned look on his face. Why in God’s name would our parents want to buy this dump (our description)? We proceeded inside to see what else there was to see.

What we saw was a red, white and blue kitchen, a bathroom with light green fixtures and pink and purple tile, no baseboard heat upstairs, no bedroom closets and exactly one room with a light switch on the wall (the rest were pull chains in the middle of the room). To be fair, we also saw acres of fields and woods to explore and a barn (with a real tractor!) that held promise for a pony.

So my parents bought the place, we moved in, and my mother assured my grandmother that the “big old barn of a house” was in fact structurally sound (sort of). We kids shrugged it off and set about finding new friends, getting to know a new school, etc. And, as the years went by we got used to (sort of) my parents’ rehabilitation projects. One year, we had Easter Sunday in the hollow shell of our living room with plastic covering the partially installed fireplace. Another time, I slept on the couch in a spare room piled high with furniture for 2 weeks while the floorboards in my room were being refinished. Nothing ever seemed to go as planned. Dave and I did, however, learn quite a few new four-letter words during those days.

My parents did most of the work themselves. One summer my mother spontaneously pulled up a linoleum tile from the corner of the kitchen and discovered real hardwood floors! Naturally, we were all enlisted to get down on our hands and knees to peel linoleum, heat the glue with an iron and use a kitchen knife to scrape it up as it softened. My brother actually completed a lot of that messy job.

This do-it-yourself thing was okay up to a point. I’m sure it’s no coincidence that I was about 12 years old and becoming acutely aware of my image and social class when I really freaked out about my parents self-induced projects. I’ll never forget the school bus rolling to a stop in front of the house on a very rainy day one spring. It was pouring buckets outside and pretty dark. Suddenly, I heard a schoolmate say “Hey, what happened to your house?” I turned to look and saw that the entire front of the house had been ripped off. It looked like a hurricane had come through. And for one small moment I really wondered if something catastrophic had happened. Then, I saw them. Mom and Dad were wrapped in rain slickers, crowbars in hand, hacking away at the last remaining section of what used to be an enclosed front porch. I tried to shrink back into my bus seat. Everyone on the bus was staring out the left side of the bus. Several kids asked me what “those people” were doing to my house. I’m sure I said something about my “crazy parents” and got off that bus as fast as possible. I don’t remember what I said to my parents but, I have a vivid memory of the look on my Mom’s face. Hair plastered against her face, soaking wet to the skin, she had a look of pure glee about her. Thinking on it now, I guess she must have been so happy to be taking some step - any step - that would improve the look of our house from the outside.

My parents, to their credit, did then and still do have incredible vision when it comes to creating a living space. I don’t think my brother or I could have guessed what a beautiful home my parents would eventually create. Mom and Dad could see that the house had good bones, even though it had only been used as a utilitarian space to meet the needs of a farm family in the past.

These days, they periodically talk about selling the house. I participate in these conversations, talking about real estate values, the advantages of not having a high-maintenance home to care for, the rising property tax problem, etc. There are real and practical reasons for my parents to consider selling it. But, when I’m alone and quietly thinking about that house, I realize that I’d be devastated if I couldn’t spend time there. It’s the scene of many family memories and where I learned to love the great outdoors. There is a bedroom in the upper right corner of the house that used to be painted lavender. In this room I had friends sleep over, I listened to rock music as loud as I could get away with, I poured over maps trying to figure out how to get out of that small town, I cried myself to sleep over lost loves and I got dressed on my wedding day. And now, that room is where my daughters sleep when they go for sleepovers. These memories won’t go away if the house passes out of our family’s hands, but I sure will miss it all the same.

copyright by Kelly Reale, 2007