Honoring the house that was
Yesterday, I wrote about my clients who bought land, torn down a house and put up a modular. They thought long and hard about how to honor the family that lived there before them. Not only did my clients choose a home that fit into the neighborhood, but they also chose one that looks a good bit like the original house with an addition. The main part of the outside of the new house still resonates with the family home it replaced. (This inside works a lot differently, thus the need for the modular house.) They also communicated with the family about their progress. Surprisingly, the seller (a younger relative who did not grow up there) came to see the new house setting. She seems reconciled, according to my client.
It has been a difficult process for the members of the extended family who had memories in that house. The couple who lived in this house was at the center of a large, extended family. One neighbor-relative said he will always remember the matriarch of the family sitting on the front porch. He said something like this: “She’s gone. Now the house is gone. Leaving the house there won’t bring her back.” Another neighbor, who wasn’t a relative, remembers both of the owners. “They were really nice people. Both of them.”
The night of the house setting, these stories made me wonder. What’s become of my childhood home? So I went to Google maps to see the street I grew up on.
I was hoping to see a nicer house the place of old number 314. I was disappointed. Less had changed than I expected. The dinky little Cape is still there. Looking down the street, it was still 50s Capes as far as the eye can see; same as when I last saw the street (six years ago.)
How do you feel about your childhood home? Did you feel angry when your childhood house was sold to the next family? Would you be angry at someone who put a different house in its place?
How do you feel about your childhood home? Would you be angry at someone who put a different house in its place? I don’t know if I am unusual in my antipathy to my childhood home. I don’t like the house, never did. I get the sense that many people are attached to their childhood home, and other houses along the way. Curiously, I have never gotten particularly attached to any house. Have you?
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My mother sold my childhood home that my parents purchased when I was an 8 month old infant. The calendar of days my mom kept for the first year of my life includes notations about moving in, ironing curtains, etc.
My parents separated when I was in college, and divorced a year after I graduated. In 2008 it was time for my mom to sell. She sold to an elderly couple to which this was their "dream home". I grew up in rural Pennsylvania, and apparently this couple didn't even have a central heating system in the farm house they lived in. They used a wood burning stove.
My dad had an engineering background and had all kinds of specialized systems and solar panels installed in the home and had doubled the home in the time our family lived in it, adding luxury items like a jacuzzi. After sale, these people would call my Mom incessantly with questions about the house, even though my Mom gave them a huge binder with literally every bit of documentation on everything done on the house for the last 27 years.
When my Mom visited them they had torn out the expensive Waverly wallpaper in the kitchen, cut down all the 200-300 year old trees in the back (I imagine to sell for firewood, but it leaves no shade on the side of a mountain), and painted everything dusty country blue, and added a second microwave to the kitchen. Of course, that's their right. But I'd never step foot in the house. I choose to remember the place as it was the last time I saw it.
If I sold it - its their house. I like houses when I live in them, but they are just things - not people or dogs (bias there... )
Once I move out, I'm curiouse about what people do, and hope they like what I've done, but fundamentally, they can do what they want with it as long as the check clears.
I find the attitude of treating the house like its an essential family member that is sometimes evinced on these blogs to be passing strange. Possession are things, and not something to get emotional about. That's for people
We sold my childhood home when my father, who had been living independently following my mother's death, moved in with my family due to aging and chronic illness. It was very hard emotionally to sort through the years of accumulated family belongings and make decisions about keeping, storing, or disposing of things in the time frame the sale of the house allowed. I have very fond memories of family, school friends, and pets. But there's sadness too, many of the relatives and friends who made our home the special place it was have passed. My mother made wonderful holiday dinners and she was a warm hostess. Our weekends were full of visits from relatives and friends, long afternoons of talking, laughing, and eating together. I remember returning visits to our relatives' homes and the occasions that brought us together.
I may be sentimental, but I often recall the houses and people associated with them that were part of my childhood.
I have not visited my childhood home since it was sold. I know the new owner had plans to improve it. It needed a great deal of updating because of electrical and plumbing systems that dated to the construction of the house in the early 1900s. "System" is a generous term.
I have often thought about whether letting the house go was best and wondered if we could have kept it in the family and rented the apartments (it was a multifamily). But what would I do, visit to relive childhood memories? I have photo albums that allow me to do that. The responsibility of caring for young children and an elderly father would have made it very challenging. And, the expensive (and extensive) improvements that a responsible owner would need to implement would have required oversight. Time was not in ample supply.
My parents had a great deal of pride in their home. They worked hard to buy it at a time when my father's income just met working class family expenses. Perhaps that has influenced how I feel about their home and my own family's home. There is a great pleasure in living in a place created by the hard work, love, and comfort of family and friends.
Interesting story.
My first house was an antique fixer upper which had been neglected for many, many years. Any fixes in the 50 years prior to my purchase were on the cheap. After I'd lived there ten years and nearly finished renovations, a group of middle-aged people drove up to the house and asked to see it. They had grown up there, and were on their way home from their mother's funeral. I'm glad they had a chance to relive some memories and get a chance to see the house live up to their childhood memories (which hadn't seen the flaws.)
I have no desire to see the home where I grew up. My youngest sister was born there, my father died in the house after a long illness, and I helped my mom keep up the house for several years before she moved to a beautiful condo. I keep in touch with my old friends from the neighborhood on Facebook. I'm missing nothing.
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