It's official. We had the final "final weekend" in Sullivan. It took an extended stay, multiple missed meals, and strong personal control not to lash out at the other members of the family (it helped that most of the weapons and tools were cleared out of the house at the end), but we got the job done.
Looking back, I question whether we would have been as eager to make the move had we known what it would entail. We've busted multiple deadlines dating back to August getting everything lined up. We've completed several dozen improvements tackling the the carpet, the walls, the basement, the kitchen, the bathrooms, and the lawn (in the course of re-seeding and fertilizing our yard, my shoes, shorts, and the lower half of my t-shirt got a healthy dusting. I wager if I hadn't cleaned them off, I could have watered my sneakers, put them in a corner, and waited for the grass sprouts to come).
The place has never been better. This isn't just end-of-the-job hyperbole. Our house had some entertaining design flaws. Our block was made up of houses built by high schoolers as part of an old vocational credit course. The quality would shift from room to room or even from corner to corner.
My mom and I started blaming "Steve," the idiotic would-be builder who couldn't grasp quality construction work. Steve hung this door that was installed backwards. Steve painted the basement's wall where the paint job stopped before the floor, and some cases, had the open gaps filled with yellow stars so that it wouldn't look as open. Steve installed the outlet that wouldn't service three-pronged appliances. "Dang it, Steve" was my personal lament when something was poorly enivisioned and executed.
Of course, we shouldn't leave out the carpet crew in our laments. While the contractor meant well, and had an estimate quite a bit lower than the next bidder, they cost us extra weekends when things were not finished as quickly as expected, or cleaned up neatly, nor properly. The last one is only guessing, but no one remembers the pipes leaking before the workers temporarily removed the bathroom fixtures. That last complication should not be brought up with certain members of a family for the same reason that one doesn't poke a grizzly bear with a stick when the bear is already tired and simply wanting to sell the old lair and move into a new cave before the next hibernation.
Regardless of all that, though, things do look good. Looking at the finished product, I voiced my opinion that it will be nicer now that it doesn't have occupants regullarly making a mess of things.
Part of me will miss it, but enough changes have gone by that it's no longer the house I remember growing up in.
I took a final lap around the house and could see many traits that we no longer there.
I could see the freshly planted sapplings that our family planted that now tower over the house. I could see the tall tree that partially blocked my window, and the fact that the screen had been removed for years (I didn't use this additional exit very option, by in a straight-laced way, I felt like a bit of a rebel knowing I had the option). I could see the kitten sitting in the window of the basement. I could see the old clothesline and the tomahawk target set up in the back yard (much to the chagrin of the neighbor's property values). I could see the rickety porch instead of the rebuilt, solid version with the steps that won't threaten to break off beneath your feet. I could see my mother's potted rosebushes and the neighbor's thorny honey locust trees that gave me countless scratches before both were later removed (one by a cold snap, the other by a fresh set of neighbors who didn't like the long line of prickly trees lining one side of their driveway). I could see my sister's swingset before it became a rusting tetanus nightmare/mowing hazard. I could see the neighboring wooden play set built by the same geniuses who slapped together the porch (with the same quality I might add based on the fact it simply fell down one day, though I now wonder if my Dad may have sped gravity along).
The fruit trees and the grapes we never ate, the garden and flower tracts that never had enough care, the rock garden that we couldn't help adding to with every boat trip. All these, and more I could remember.
It's a nice house. I hope it will make someone else a home; preferably someone with cash and/or a solid credit rating who needs a place NOW.
And then we'll be freed up to hopefully follow in their footsteps and try to find another house, filled with multiple long-delayed improvements now finished to be enjoyed by a new occupant.
If I can wish it for someone else, I can certainly wish it for my family.
Here's hoping.
Hannah said...
Dang you! (Yes, Caleb, and not "Steve.") I've been far away for most of the moving action that it hasn't been a big part of my life--no big emotions over it, etc--and now I'm completely crying over the whole thing.
Off to search for happy thoughts now.
said...
Wow! Crying before school even starts and over the trees, bushes, flowerbeds and memories. It was a good home for us. A place to grow, live and love. I hope we fimd another just as good. No, better because "Steve" wasn't part of its construction.