We moved a lot from when I was about a year old until I was a teenager. I lived in 15 different dwellings in 10 different cities, all before I turned 16. It’s not that unusual, especially for military families, but we were not in the military. My parents followed the work and then divorced, taking us to many places in California to live. The longest we stayed anywhere was three years.
In October of 1975, my mother bought a small house on a large lot on Maryland Street. My mother, sister Laura and I moved the furniture that had come with us with each move for the final time to a place we owned and into the promise of stability and some kind of normalcy. We were so happy. It was the first house where I knew we would stay, at least for a while.
My mother passed away in January of 2022 and I inherited the house. She had a reverse mortgage so to keep it I would need to mortgage it to pay it off. I had a decision to make.
I went back and forth about whether or not to sell it. This house had been more of a constant in my life than I knew. Constants were not in abundance for me. My husband’s family moved into their house when he was 3 years old and didn’t move again until he was 38 years old. His life was full of constants. His constants seemed like a dream life for me.
The house on Maryland Street is my constant. It anchors me to the person I was and the person I became.
The house on Maryland Street had seen me through the very worst part of my life and clung relentlessly to the agony my mother and I felt when my sister Laura died from a car accident.
It had witnessed the times my mother was manic and the times she was depressed.
It guarded the organic garden my mother tilled, planted, and tended in the backyard until she no longer could.
It stood there in disapproval as I navigated my first relationship.
It smiled a few years later as I brought home the young man who would become my husband.
It watched proudly while my mother taught herself how to be an artist and painted a beautiful collection.
It breathed a sigh of relief when my mother stopped smoking so she could sew my wedding dress.
It was delighted each time I brought over my three sons who learned from their grandmother how to eat peas right from the garden and how to paint pictures.
It beamed when my mother replaced the midcentury modern flat-top roof with a pitched roof that transformed it into the farmhouse she wanted it to be.
It would have yelled, if it could, the time the man broke in, in the middle of the night, and watched in horror as my mother screamed at him to get out of her house. He had no idea who he was dealing with nor the fact that she was an insomniac. He exited swiftly before the reckoning came.
It chuckled as my mother learned how to be online, but insisted everything should be printed and saved in a folder.
It stood pensively as my mother developed dementia and watched her forget to take her pills. In solidarity, it felt the loss of who she had once been, along with me.
It blinked back the tears as my mother was taken away by ambulance, never to return. It didn’t know that she spent the last few weeks of her life in a care home.
The house on Maryland Street watched in disbelief as I cried about having to paint over the mural of an angel my mother had painted on the dining room wall. It was as if I was closing the house’s eyes.
The memories dwell in the plastered walls of the house on Maryland Street that stood patiently through the moments that changed everything for me. The idea of letting go of the constant that had been with me, through it all, wasn’t something I could do. So, my husband and I fixed it up and rented it out.
There are times in life when everything points to letting go, yet we continue to hold on so tightly that our hands become numb to the truth. This was one of those times.
All the time, energy, and money the house consumed was a welcome distraction for me. The grief, the sense of being the only one left who was tied to the memories in the house, and the severance of a significant part of my life were more than I could take all at once.
Despite all of this, the house kept telling me to let go. Our time together was ending, and the house knew it before I did. It conjured up ways to break down and leave me frustrated. It knew me so well and made separating easier with each year that passed. In August of 2024, the time had come.
I was ready to let go of what will now become a house that my descendants drive by and talk about how their ancestors once lived there, much like I do to the former houses of my ancestors.
Owned by someone else now, their walls, painted over many times, maintain an equal number of family histories while they simultaneously engage in the lives of their current occupants. Their windows tease with glimpses of a past muddied by the present. The walkways invite us to enter, but we know better. It’s just a memory. The family that once lived there is gone. This will be the same for the house on Maryland Street.
Yesterday, a few days before the close of escrow, I drove to the house to say goodbye. It held me close within its walls, bringing me comfort as I stood in the emptiness of each room, remembering the history of my family that had occurred over the past 49 years.
“Goodbye house,” I leaned in and whispered to it, as I closed its heavy red door one last time. “Goodbye, Robin,” it whispered back the way houses that were constants do.
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You brought tears to my eyes. A beautiful, beautiful ode to your home. Your story will stick with me.
😢 What a beautiful tale Robin. Think not with sadness but joy as you carry those memories of the house and your mom in your heart and in the memories your boys have. Thank you for sharing.