The listing says 1,344 square feet, but that has to include the basement, which was walled in and carpeted about 15 years ago. Without the basement, that number has to drop below 1,000.
The walls, upstairs, are mostly wood paneling, nailed directly onto studs. This didn't stop my parents from adorning every available inch of space with pictures, and artwork. Almost everything is gone from the walls now, packed up in several boxes that sit on a palette in the garage. Ugly holes and the occasional nail, deemed too difficult to remove, are all that's left as a reminder of what used to be. And clocks. They kept the clocks up, because the agent believes that every house would have a clock. This is part of what they call "staging".
Empty boxes arrive every week, donated by Darlene. Darlene is a friend that happens to clean people's houses for a living. Mom has been to her daughter's baby shower. Darlene has sent Christmas presents to Mom and Dad. Darlene has been to our family picnics. When Rosie would spend the weekend here, on days where Darlene was scheduled to clean, Rosie would follow her around, offering to help clean the windows or sweep up the kitchen floor. The boxes show up on a Saturday, and by Sunday they are mostly filled, taped up, and carried downstairs.
I put their piano up on Craigslist, for free. On the weekends, growing up, I didn't need an alarm clock. Children and older kids, pounding away on chords or triads, got me out of bed. Mom taught piano for years, for $10 an hour, every Saturday, occasionally Wednesday nights, if her students had packed schedules. She stopped when she decided she wanted to be a guidance counselor...and then, a principal. But, until MS and arthritis took it away, she still played for the church, and on Christmas Eve. Mom, with me and my cousins huddled around the piano at my aunt's house, singing carols, like a goddamn Norman Rockwell painting.
Downstairs, in the basement, is a dining table my father built. He is as ill-tempered about home projects as I am, which makes it unbelievable that such an item exists. He always sat at the head of the table, in front of the window, whether it was eating breakfast, or grading papers, with his enormous headphones and a mile long cable running to his stereo, blasting Benny Goodman or Artie Shaw. I'm sitting there now, with my ear buds...proof that history is cyclical.
The house is maybe 200 yards away from my elementary school. I took the bus in kindergarten, and first grade, but from second grade through sixth, I walked. Up a steep hill, cut through an alley, and you landed right in the cafeteria. The junior high school was a longer walk, through Irwin, but Dave and I would walk along the train tracks, collecting the mica that fell off of the bins of passing trains, believing that it was a valuable stone. In my old room I still have an old coffee can, packed to the brim with mica.
There's maple tree in the backyard. I could climb up 2/3rds of it, and rest on a V-shaped section, like a perch. From there I could see the roof, and the frisbee that always seemed to be trapped among the shingles. One time I jumped out of the tree, landing on my side on purpose (because there was some immense feeling of invincibility that comes with jumping out of something and not only surviving, but getting up as if nothing had happened), and fracturing a bone in my forearm. My friend, Jeff, was with me, and once he saw that I was in pain, he ran away, back to his uncle's house across the street. The tree on the other side of the house is a walnut. I would spend hours in the backyard, with a hockey stick, shooting walnuts over the hill and into the forest, so that dad wouldn't run over them with the lawnmower.
My grandparents used to live next door. For years, Christmas morning was spent across the front lawn, in a house that could be this house's brother. When they moved into an apartment my parents bought the house, rented it out, and eventually sold it. On the other side is the Bronson's house. Jessica and I grew up together. She was a quintessential tomboy, brutally strong for her relatively small frame. She visits her mom often, bringing along her three children, two of whom run over to my parents' house and knock on the door, hoping that Rosie is there. If she is they spend the afternoon running all over our yards, playing some game they created on the fly. Cyclical.
Last week I took my daughter into the forest behind their house. The topography has changed over the years, making it harder to go to landmarks that I used to frequent: the cave overlooking the creek, the waterfall, the large rock that hangs over the brook. She called it a journey, and declared herself the captain. I offered to be the navigator, and the guy that moves thorns out of the path so nobody gets jabbed. The first thing she did, when stepping into the woods, was to find a walking stick. More cyclical history.
Someone is already interested. A couple, in their twenties, not yet married. They had asked about the house before my parents even had the chance to file the paperwork. They showed up today, with the boyfriend's mother, and the couple's infant boy. I sat on the back patio, afraid to engage with them, afraid that they would point out the flaws in this house, or the small sizes of some of the rooms...and that I would snap at them, and tell them that this house is goddamn perfect, that even its flaws are perfect.
There's six weeks between when an offer is accepted and when my parents hand the keys over to the new owners.
But I'm saying goodbye now, while this house still feels like a home.
