A House On Decatur Avenue
I’m going to start this post with the exact same (title and) sentence my sister used to start hers.
I had one home growing up. A modest house on Decatur Avenue with two and a half bedrooms and one bathroom.
The picture above looks quite different from the original brown wood paneled house my mom bought with my dad when she was just twenty. She told me how much they paid for it in 1978. ($28,000.) I choked on my tea. Not because of the price, though that’s equally staggering. I choked because I hadn’t realized my mom has called the same house “home” for 31 years.
My sister lived in the house on Decatur Avenue for 20+ years. I lived there for 18, and then an additional year when I transferred colleges mid-degree. It was a place Theresa and I knew we could always come back to, a space we always knew was ours, our shelter from the storm. A place that remained consistent while everything and everyone changed around us.
Three Thursdays ago my mom called me at work. She only does that if she has great news, or not so great news, so I answered as quickly as possible, partly to ensure I wasn’t going to hear someone was in the hospital. (Go go gadget optimism!) She was calling to tell me they sold the house, our little house on Decatur Avenue, without ever putting up a “For Sale” sign, without ever even officially putting it on the market.
I wasn’t surprised. They had been talking about moving up to the lake, and anyone who knows them knows they are ridiculously happy at their “lake place,” spending their days fishing and enjoying the scenery and natural quiet, taking time to plant and grow their roots in the close-knit community up there. They are also some of the best property owners on the planet. Their lawn is meticulous, bright green and lush in the spring and summer, well taken care of throughout the winter. The house is sided, making it fire-resistant and easy to clean. The backyard is immaculately landscaped. The garage is huge. The kitchen has tiled floor, tiled counter-tops, relatively new appliances. The house has air-conditioning, a new washer and dryer, and an added small bedroom in the basement where I used to lay my head every night. It’s perfect for a first home, or a small-family home; it was perfect as our home for all these years.
I still remember the day I realized our house was modest by definition, smaller than most of of my friends’ houses. Someone else might have felt embarrassed, but I felt proud. I had good friends with homes that could swallow ours at least three times, but I always thought our house was perfect. Not too big, and not too small. Just large enough that you always knew where everyone else was, even if you were a brooding fourteen-year-old who was pretending to hide from everyone and everything, locked away downstairs in her supremely girly version of the bat cave.
Growing up we ate dinners as a family of four around a table built for six. Mom and Dad would cook while my sister and I finished homework and set the table. After dinner my parents would go sit on the back patio while Theresa and I washed all of the dinner dishes, routinely laughing ourselves silly and dancing around the kitchen in our socks, sliding from one move to the next, pausing at length to admire ourselves in the sliding glass doors that doubled as mirrors when the sun set.
I still miss that after-dinner hour more than anything else about living at home. It’s the memory–the collection of so many nights spent washing and singing, drying and dancing–that still makes me laugh the hardest, too.
I remember all of the days spent exploring our house and our neighborhood with my sister, playing games like “Tornado” (wherein the name of said game is to run around as if a funnel cloud is coming at you from all directions; it’s SO WINDY), looking for secret passageways underneath the basement stairs, and throwing tea parties in the backyard featuring Cheerios and Kool-Aid.
I remember my sister and I sharing a bedroom until my room was built in the basement, and after I moved downstairs we realized we could still talk to each other through the vents in our respective rooms. I remember friends sleeping over and being so excited to “sneak out,” which always involved crawling out my fire-escape-sized bedroom window and sitting on the cool grass right outside of it, laughing and talking after quickly discovering we had exactly no where to go at midnight on a Tuesday in the middle of summer.
I remember, too, watching three dear friends move away from me, away from all of their other friends. I remember missing them, and thinking how terrible it must have been for them to have been uprooted, while simultaneously feeling thankful for never having to face such a reality. I vividly recall telling my mother I would chain myself to the house should they ever attempt to move away from it.
What’s been so unexpected about all of this physical change is how peaceful and detached both my sister and I have felt, and continue to feel, even while realizing we will never again step foot in a house filled with so many memories from so many years spent there together as a family.
I was in Spokane in October and I didn’t know it would be the last time I would ever be standing in the kitchen, in the living room, in the basement that became such a focal point of my world from seventh grade through my senior year of high school. I didn’t run my hands over the counter-tops whimsically, trying to remember their color and texture. I didn’t memorize the cracks in the cement on the back walkway, gaze at my mother’s rose bushes, or try to find the place in my old bedroom where I once tried to hide $20.00 underneath a wood panel on the lower south wall. I didn’t stand in the backyard and think about all the summer nights we spent playing badminton, sans net, and how many times the shuttlecock ended up on the top of the garage. I didn’t take one last lingering look through a rear view mirror as I was being driven away from our little house, back to the airport.
I didn’t need to. I remember everything, just as it was, just like it will forever be in my head, our little house on Decatur Avenue.
Lovely post, Kerri. Such memories.
We played Tornado, too. Only our version involved clasping our hands behind our backs, looking straight up at the sky, and spinning in violent circles until we nearly puked. We were very bright.
I am still in awe that you lived in one house growing up. I just did a quick count and just counting to the end of high school, I lived in seven different houses.
I love that you had that consistency growing up. I also loved this post, in general.
When you said you were struggling with a title for this post I immediately thought of “House on Mango Street” but didn’t say it. Great minds, my friend.
:-)
You have so many great memories of that house. What a gift.
What a great perspective. My experience was quite different – I moved many times while growing up, and my parents have both moth several times since I moved out. So I don’t have a place I think of as “home” really. I mean anywhere my family is is home, but there’s not a physical location, a house, that feels like home. Your description of such a thing sounds lovely.
Umm hum….I know exactly what you’re talking about. I lived in the same house my entire growing up period……same house, no moving, until my adult life. And, like you, the memories are definitely still there. A perfect way for me to start a Monday morning.
Beautiful. I lived in the same house growing up, too. My parents still live there. If they moved, I wouldn’t need to memorize anything about the house, either… because I already have. It’s ingrained.
I know I tell you this all the time, but seriously, Kerr, you are my writing hero. This is just a lovely, lovely piece. When I grow up, can I please write just half as good as you do? :)
xo Jen
What a sweet tribute to your childhood home. And now you’ll have this post to remember it.
The strangest thing happened to me while I read this post. Well, first, I cried because it was beautiful. The whole time I was reading it, I was thinking about my childhood home and how even though you and I had very different existences, the feelings are exactly the same.
Dave and I didn’t pay the mortgage this month. We won’t pay it again until one or both of us has a job. And I’ve been FINE about the fact that we might lose the house. I keep thinking – It’s JUST a house, we’re still a family, right?
But to my kids it’s a lot more than the ugly white kitchen tile and the apple trees in the backyard. SO much more.
This post made me realize that I’m the grown-up now.
Fuck.
Beautiful post, Kerr.
thanks for sharing your story…it was beautiful to read.
That gave me goosebumps, Kerr.
My parents don’t live in their house anymore either. It’s. . . weird.
Beautiful post.
Perfectly lovely. And this made me miss my sister.
Your parents are brave and adventurous to make such a move. What a fun new chapter for you all.
Goodness, this post is lovely. I live 10 minutes from my parents, who still live in my childhood home, and sometimes, when I’m feeling sad or unsure, my lip quivers when I leave because I just miss that feeling of safety you described so, so much.
Great post.
Like a few others who’ve commented, I’ve lived in so many houses that none of them could be considered my “childhood home”. From ages 0-18, I lived in (hold on… counting…) 8 houses in two different states. And from 18-28 (almost 29, OMG!), I’ve lived in 12 homes, or 8 if you only consider everything after college.
It actually feels really good to have purchased my own house this year. I am slowly getting the feeling when I pull into my garage that this is really mine – I’m not renting or leasing, it is my little townhouse on my little street in my neighborhood of the big ol’ city of Atlanta.
What a truly beautiful piece. Thank you for sharing your memories in such a wonderfully written way.
Oh my Kerri, what a freaking gorgeous blog you have here.
I’m so curious where this particular Decatur is located…
Surfed here through BlogHer – nice to meet you!
Oh, this post hit me *right there*. I grew up in one house, too. Aside from the house my husband and I live in now, that little house was the only place I have ever truly felt at home in. When my mother died we inherited the house; we fixed it up and lived there for two years before I was ready to move.
I has the chance to go through the house about a year after we’d moved from it and it was a very cool experience for me. I loved the way it looked, how it had changed and the way the new owner had made it her own. It was such a positive experience for me..I wasn’t sad at all, because I remember everything about that house in my mind, just as it was.
Love love this post.
I love the talking through vents and sneaking out at midnight to discover you had nowhere to go. The rural northwest is a wonderful place to grow up. :)
This is exactly how I felt when we sold my Grandma’s house. I always felt so safe and at home there. I hope to be able to provide the same type of home to my children some day.
chica. What beautiful memories.
It’s still strange (11 years after they sold it and moved) to visit my parents in their home that is not my home from childhood.
There was supposed to be a hug at the beginning of that last comment. I don’t know what happened. :)
What a beautiful post! Can I add to the list of memories?!? I remember your birthday/end of school parties, eating your mom’s cooking, watching scary movies, sharing your bed countless time, and always having such a good time. Your house is such a part of my teenage! I know what it is like to lose your childhood home…it is something that can never be replaces. It is like you have to now go out and define your own ‘home’. A bit sad and bitter sweet and yet at the same time gives this strange sense of ease to know that a home is not defined by a house.
Love love love