our house was a very, very, very fine house.
this was our song, and possibly one of our few shared values and dreams. we both had this fantasy about being the unofficial den mothers of whichever band of kids happened to be playing with our own. you know, the house where the snack cabinet is always stocked, the edict of the day is “go outside”, and the backyard is full of neglected and possibly dangerous things. you and me, lord and lady of the overgrown acre.
when your father left us, it was understood that you’d be taking the house, and so, by extension, would i and my daughter. this was the house you grew up in. the house your father grew up in. you weren’t at all open about your grief, so i wasn’t certain how to approach our impending move. my best guess was that we should make it our own – not in an attempt to erase your father – but in an attempt to create the next chapter of this storied place. i didn’t know how to help you in your grief. i hoped i was doing it right. and so i set to work remaking your father’s house. for nearly six months, i spent every free day i had alone, wrestling the loveliness out of our house’s good bones.
i remember emptying your father’s room, tenderly moving his shoes, his clothes, his things, to a place where you’d never have to see them again. i pressed my face against his mattress as i gracelessly shimmied it down the hallway, pregnant with his granddaughter and thanking him for a place to raise her.
i remember watching you discover lost artifacts of your childhood, your face clouding over with sadness, or lighting up with laughter. i loved being in the place you were before you grew to be the man i loved.
i demolished walls. chose floor stain colors. painted, and repainted. replaced light fixtures. planted flowers. spent hours on the internet looking for inspiration, dreaming up the spaces that our kids would long for, try to recreate, once they flew our sweet little coop one day far from now.
oh, and i’d be utterly remiss not to mention my beloved lemon tree. (we had our very own lemon tree! with free lemons! all the things i could make with them!)
i trusted you when you said that although our house may have been inherited by you, you considered it just as much mine too. i didn’t hesitate. we marked my older daughter’s height on that unassuming little door jamb in the kitchen, next to other relatives’ annual measurements. we all three dipped our thumbs in paint and stamped a closet wall with our thumbprints, marking this place ours. you and i sat on the front steps in the shadow of the big tree, watching the sun sink, planning the swing we’d hang there for our daughter when she arrived.
i had not had a home, a real place to call mine, to be proud of, in my adult life. apartments, yes. but an actual house? no. and it wasn’t just the house – no way. i loved it as more than the sum of its walls, floors, and windows. i loved it as a woman loves the container in which she has chosen to grow her dreams for a rich future with her husband and children, loved it as the place i would build us new traditions and beloved memories. it wasn’t just a house. it was the place where i was going to have the family i so deeply wanted, now that i had made all my mistakes.
the day you found out about my past, you told me i couldn’t live in our house anymore. i stood on the tiles by the front door, the ones my brother had puzzled over how to fix, as you decreed mine and my daughters’ eviction from this place i had come to adore, come to treasure, come to grow not a little pride in. exiled from my labor of love, two children in tow. a bitter loss.
even now, nearly two years out from living everyday under that roof, seeing our house does something rough to my heart. when i video chat our daughter, i now see the furniture i left behind mixed with the furniture of the woman you’ve decided to live with, and i wonder at how these things happen. how does something as simple as the world turning round change the day i was on my hands and knees pulling staples from the living room floor into the day that very same floor witnesses you and your new lover’s feet spend the morning padding about?
it was just the sun going up and down, that’s all it was. yes, the sun going up and down – with its dastardly power to make thinkable things that were previously not so.
i realize my place in the turning of time. like your grandmother and your mother before me, my days at arbol ave were always numbered. perhaps my days lasted more shortly than these forebears, but they were no less marked by commitment to be the matriarch of our little corner of our little town, house blessed by tall grasses and fruit trees, shambles of broken down stables reminding us of the horses long since gone. how i treasured the place you grew up.
vandal that i am: on the day that i left, i took a piece of our house, just a tiny bit of brick from the front wall, to memorialize the place that i thought i might get old with you, might raise my kids, might give them what people call a “normal childhood.” i’m not ashamed to admit that on grief days, i carry this bit of brick around with me. my talisman, my reminder that my love renewed an old place, filled it with hope, gave it some new life, if only for a little.
may i remember that my love transforms things. i bless my powerful heart and its will to create beauty for the ones it loves.
may i take heart in the constancy of change.
may the floors, walls, and windows of your house witness decades of happiness and blessings.
may i fully release you from any debt i feel you owe me over our former home.
and may you and your chosen love truly enjoy your father’s very, very, very fine house.
Letters to a Life I Loved 