I am someone who believes in the old saying that home is where the heart is. With the move, I have been telling the kids that home is wherever we are, all together. It helped a little bit that we read the Little House on the Prairie Books together and could talk about how many times Laura's family had moved as they pushed westward across the prairie. But still they did not want to leave.
There is something, too, about the houses you grow up in and the memories that you have of that physical place. I remember the farmhouse where I lived as a little girl. The patterns on the linoleum and the tile in the kitchen, the hippie orange and brown yarn weaving my mom had hanging on the wall and the texture of the davenport in our living room. I remember the pitch of the roof in the attic where the kid bedrooms were and the red flowers that my mom grew by the patio.
One of the hardest things about moving was that the kids were upset that we were selling the house. David engaged in some magical thinking for a while, telling himself that no one would want it and we could just keep it as our Iowa vacation house. He would get so upset about the thought of selling the house that I stopped mentioning to Joe anything about buyer showings or the like if David was around. Sometimes it was hard not to fantasize along with him.
Last weekend we went back to stay in our house and had what will be out last Easter egg hunt there. The weather was beautiful and my favorite yellow magnolia tree was in full bloom in the yard. The kids played ball in the cul-de-sac and happily ran down the street to shoot hoops with the neighbor kids. I fell in love with the house all over again, wrapped up in years of happy memories and the beauty of the green yard in spring. Not to mention how lovely it was staged with all of the clutter packed away in boxes.
After the eggs were all found and we had packed up to leave, we learned that the family who saw it on Saturday had made an offer to buy it. I am convinced it was the yellow magnolia tree they fell in love with as I had years before. And just like that, it was no longer ours. But David did want to know if the people who bought it would ever sell it again, so that he could buy it as an adult and move back in. That boy and his sweet heart get me every time. And so I want this post to be for the kids to remember our house in Iowa.
The living room, where the kids would get games and puzzles out of the cabinet and leave them strewn out on that coffee table for days. The coffee table acquired a permanent ring from a mug of hot chocolate that was left there one cold winter day when we were inside and the boys had Axis and Allies all over the room. There were tons and tons of Legos assembled over the years here. I love that rug because it remind me of something you would spread out on the beach for a picnic.
The dining room where we hosted Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter with aunts, uncles and grandparents. Lots of reminders were given in this room to not blow out the candles while we were still eating. In the dark. When we moved into this house, the movers accidentally took a huge chunk out of one of the legs on this dining room table. I was hugely bummed for weeks, thinking they had ruined the table. I tried gluing the broken piece back in with wood glue. It stuck, but the harsh yellow glue lines were clumsy and obvious. After a while, I grew to love this ugly gash in the table filled in with glue because it feels like a metaphor for marriage and for life--you make mistakes, you fix things as best you can and keep going. And the table keeps hosing our family dinners just fine.
The family room where the kids were most often watching tv, working on Legos or reading by the fire. The Christmas tree was always in the corner to the left of the fireplace. I have lots of memories of the kids running into this room on Christmas morning so excited to see what Santa had left. The redbud tree outside the window was their favorite climbing tree. Growing up on our farm, the redbud tree was a favorite climbing tree for me and my brother and sister as well, and I loved this connection to my childhood. I saw the painting over the fireplace in the window of Pier1 as I was headed into Trader Joe's on a grocery run. Something compelled me to turn around and buy it, and I still love it to this day. Buy what you love is the best decorating advice I ever have received.
The kitchen. It looked like the picture above when we moved in. And about a year later, after a month and a half without running water and loads of white paint, like this:
The place where hundreds of mostly mediocre meals and endless snacks were consumed. Lots of grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup (my specialty since law school). Somewhere along the way with kids I realized that my kids prefer to know what is coming, so we started a dinner schedule. Monday was pasta night, Tuesdays fish (usually in the form of sticks), Wednesdays chicken (usually nuggets), Thursday soup and sandwich and Friday nights we always ordered pizza for family movie night.
We had some great meals, too, usually when the grandmothers were around to help inspire me to do better in the kitchen. Iowa ham at Easter, turkeys at Thanksgiving and stuffed shells on Christmas Eve. Always bagels and lox with red onions and capers on Christmas morning for the adults. Served with mimosas and good coffee. The kids were too excited to eat anyway. Later we would make chocolate steamed puddings like my grandma used to make. Speaking of chocolate, I learned how to make double chocolate chocolate chip cookies in these ovens. The rare food that all three kids loved. And the gingerbread houses I make with the kids every year were always stored up high on the shelf over the refrigerator.
The kitchen sink, where I stood and watched Grandma Julie climb onto the roof with a broom to sweep off the satellite dish so that we could watch the Super Bowl. The kids spent hours birdwatching out the window over the sink. Woodpeckers and eastern Iowa goldfinches and lots and lots of sparrows. I spent hours doing dishes at that same window and watching the kids on the magical swingset between the pine trees and the apple trees. Your toes would touch the apples in late summer if you pumped high enough on the swing.
The office where the kids watched hours and hours of stupid cat videos after school. Fortunately or unfortunately, I hear they still have stupid cat videos in Chicago.
When we moved in, the room looked like this (for orientation, the desk in the picture above would be up against the two windows in the picture below):
The room creeped me out and I couldn't figure out why until one day I decided it felt like being in a giant coffin with all of that wood around you. Our painter suggested painting it like this, and after he was done, I felt much better.
This built in desk on the other side of the room is where Joe stored his big Costco packs of gum. The kids were adept at swiping pieces and secretly chewing them like little gum ninjas. Especially Davey, who was known for leaving gum and wrappers all over the house.
The view from the front door. It had the hallway with the highest ceilings where the kids would fly their remote controlled helicopters.
These stairs were carpeted when we bought the house. I had always wanted hardwood stairs with white risers and finally got them when had hardwood floors installed and painted the risers and spindles white. Grandma Julie and Julia always sat on these stairs on beggar's night and answered the door here for tricker or treaters while they heard the kids' jokes to get candy. I will miss that Iowa tradition.
The master bedroom, where we all piled "on the big bed" to read stories every night. One of my favorite things about being a parent is reading out loud to my kids every night. On this bed we read The Odyssey, Winnie the Pooh, George and Martha, the entire Magic Treehouse Series, all of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Pinkalicious, Lego books, Star Wars books, Elephant and Piggie books, The Guinness Book of World Records, Dr. Seuss and so many more. Did I mention more Captain Underpants than I wish to read in a lifetime? I loved turning on the fireplace on winter nights and we would all snuggle up under the down comforter and read. There were no neighbors behind us, just a creek and a ravine full of trees. I found it very peaceful to fall asleep to the owls and wake up to see the sun over the trees.
When we looked at buying this house, one of the big selling points by our realtor was that it had three bathrooms upstairs so that everyone could be spread out as they got ready. I laugh now in retrospect, because the only place my kids ever wanted to get ready was in my bathroom with me. On top of me, on top of each other and always together. My kids always used our "big tub" and our shower. All three of them fit in this tub together and spent hours hanging out here while they played with legos, played with glowing fish in the tub with the lights out, used water color paints to paint the sides of the tub on winter days when we had nothing better to do anyway. When we lived in this house, I read an interview with an actor who said she drinks her coffee in the shower and thought to myself that she was incredibly brilliant. This shower had a little ledge where I would rest my coffee so that I could drink it while I was in the shower. It's the little things in life, right?
This was the bedroom at the end of the hall. At various times it was AJ's room, Julia's room and then our guest room. When we put the house on the market, we staged it as a playroom. Joe spent an entire weekend painstakingly painting that stenciled wall for Julia one winter. It was maddening to line up the stencil correctly, and after one row, I suggested that he just forget it and paint over it rather than continuing on. I was amazed at his patience in doing it over and over again to get it to look like this. If the next family paints over it, may they never tell us. The tent in the corner was our present to Julia for her fifth birthday. It didn't get as much use as the tents we made out of blankets and chairs.
You know how you can be married to someone for ten years and think you know everything about them until bam! one day they do something totally out of character that surprises the heck out of you? That is Joe and this deck. The man loves brown everything in the home--couches, coffee tables, dining room tables--you name it, he thinks it looks good in brown and sees no need to change it. When we moved in, this deck was brown and in need of paint touch ups. Imagine my surprise when Joe came back from the paint store with the color above--Lake Blue. Go for it! I egged him on. Once we started painting, I had a moment of panic when the blue appeared to be more of the Smurf blue hue. But two coats later and I was won over. And the end result was one of my favorite home improvement projects ever.
The mudroom. One of the first things we did when we moved into this house was to have the closet in this room ripped out and replaced with lockers. The kids loved to hide in their lockers and pop out to scare each other. Outside the door is the side porch, also known as the kid porch and the rain porch. The best place to watch summer thunderstorms. I remember sitting on the front porch of our farmhouse as a kid snuggled under a blanket watching a rainstorm. Joe loves to watch the rain, too, and would often sit on this porch during a storm.
My favorite thing about the house, the yellow magnolia tree. I always requested Mother's Day pictures in front of this tree. It was flowering the week we bought the house and the week we sold it. I will miss this tree.
