A House, A Home

Monday, November 11, 2013



Earlier this year, I sold the house in which Kevin and I had lived for twenty years. It was a terribly difficult thing to do. I had hoped to stay in the house until our daughter graduated from high school in 2015, but keeping up an old farmhouse on two acres of land (mostly vegetable and flower gardens) was becoming increasingly impossible. It had occurred to me that it might take two years to sell the house, given Michigan’s slowly recovering economy. Instead, the house sold within six months of listing, and after nearly one-hundred showings (yes, 100). 

Any home would be difficult to leave, but leaving our home was particularly traumatic. Kevin and I purchased it shortly after we married. We had been visiting my brother one evening, and had a conversation with him about when we could buy our first house. We complained that it would take years to save for a down payment while paying off student loans, paying rent in Ann Arbor, and handling other expenses like car payments, insurance, etc. Dusk was just settling in as we headed
Moving day.
back to our apartment and passed an old, abandoned, farmhouse with knee-high grass and a wooden screen door flapping in the late autumn wind. I yelled at Kevin to turn into the drive and that was all it took. We returned a few days later with our trusty landlord/general contractor and made a bid on the house by the weekend. My parents helped with the down payment, which was all of $4000.

Friends came out and looked at the house prior to our move-in, dubbing it “Sullivan Acres” after the 1970’s television show “Green Acres.” Another friend called the basement a Turkish prison, and several were certain it was haunted. Regardless of these “concerns” we moved in just before Christmas and began work, pulling plaster and lathe off the walls, scraping up carpet, re-wiring, re-plumbing, and then putting it all back together. Over the course of this time, we lived on the first floor, then only in the kitchen, then we moved out altogether and lived first in a sublet in Ann Arbor, and then with my parents in Detroit. Finally, just six months before our first child was born, we moved back. The original plan was to gut, rebuild, and sell, making enough money to have a down payment on a nice house in Ann Arbor. But then life happened and soon our kids were settled into the schools, we made friends, and the idea of selling became distant. The few times we considered selling we needed only to attend a few open houses where we would list all the shortcomings of the property and decide instead to stay put.

The house became a huge part of our identity. “We live in the yellow farm house across from the party store,” was pretty much all we ever had to say to anyone in Dexter and they would know the one. The home’s original family still lived in town, and our work had made many curious over the years. We frequently entertained, welcoming friends and neighbors as often as we could find an occasion. Our children held many sleepovers and birthday parties, and roamed the two acres finding snakes, frogs, and bunny rabbits.

After. July, 2012
My feelings about the house are now, for the most part, ambivalent. It is my great regret (given my now perfect hindsight), that we stayed in the house for so long. How many trips could we have taken, how many memories could we have created with the time and money used on our house? It breaks my heart to think about this.

On the other hand, how great it was to have such a place to call our home.  And what a true accomplishment it was for us both. Many times (well, more than once, anyway) I encountered someone who, upon hearing of this project, would tell me that they had undertaken a similar project with their former spouse. A marriage that can survive such a major home renovation is a rare thing. I also know that Kevin and I learned so much from that renovation; there was nothing that could go wrong that one of us (mostly Kevin) couldn’t fix.

Shortly after Kevin received his Stage IV diagnosis, we talked about our accomplishments. It was a dreadful conversation to have. I reminded Kevin that he had realized so much—a Michigan MBA, a position of importance with an international corporation that respected him and held his opinion in high regard, many close friends, children that loved him and wanted to spend time with him, an extended family who loved him. He had traveled the world, run a marathon, and completely renovated an old house that was now a beautiful, memory-filled home. His response was that he wasn’t done yet, which I completely understood and agreed with. But it was important to me that he know how very much he had achieved; that his was not a life that, by anyone’s estimation, would come up short.

Containing our marriage, indeed our lives, into moving boxes was a physically and emotionally challenging chore. There were times, I must admit, when there was a certain lightness and liberation to it as well—an uncluttering. For the most part though, it felt like a stripping away or reduction of so much that defined me and us. Our marriage would never be defined by things, but it certainly was defined, in part, by that house. And now, I’m attempting to create new definitions for myself that don’t necessarily involve the home in which I live.

Now, the house is occupied by two plant biologists who both teach at the University of Michigan. They have two children, a boy and girl, who are the same age difference as ours. They love the gardens, the antiquity, the creaking of the wood floors, and the inviting porch. They understand the memories that reside within the house and hope to make their own. There is a certain miraculous symmetry to their purchase of our home. I wish them well.

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