Wednesday, March 25, 2015

It's A Small World After All. Or The House That Built Me. Or The Houses That Didn't.

We're getting ready to put our house on the market.  A little new carpet, a little new paint, and a horrifyingly expensive retaining wall are all that stand between us being able to sell the old homestead and look for something better.  Much thanks is owed to our good friend and realtor, Jess, who has been a help in so many ways.  She's really gone above and beyond, and we aren't even listed yet.  I was very happy to be able to help her a little bit last week, and like so many other random things, the experience got me thinking.

A week or so ago, Jess came by to take a good look at the house, make some staging suggestions, and discuss the pricing and listing.  We got to talking, and she mentioned a listing that she is going to have shortly in Seven Hills.  Naturally, since I grew up there, I asked her where the house was in Seven Hills.  And naturally, when she told me Pleasant Valley Road, I asked her to be more specific.  And when she told me, I realized that it was a house I was very familiar with! The previous owners' daughter had gone to grade school and high school with me, and I had been to the house many, many times.  Jess asked me if I knew anything about the house, which is a really neat turn of the century farmhouse. Unfortunately all that I could tell her was that the house and grounds were really cool, which was not particularly helpful.  It had been a few years since I had talked to her, but I offered to try and get in touch with my old friend and see what she could tell us about the house.

The email address that I had didn't seem to get through, but I asked around among our mutual grade school and high school friends and I was able to get in touch. It was really great to reconnect.   She could not have been more excited to share the extensive history of her childhood home, as well as all of the renovations that her parents had done to house.  She also told me how much she loved that house, how much the house meant to her, and asked if it would be possible to bring her husband and children to see it.

That gave me what my sister would call "the warm fuzzies." I'm not particularly attached to the house we live in right now.  The neighborhood maybe, but not the house.  We didn't pick it out together and though we renovated it top to bottom, it was a stressful, expensive process that caused a lot of arguing and a lot of very quiet nights. It ran way over budget and way over the timeline. And a lot of stupid things went wrong that weren't even in our renovation plans. (Though the buyer of the house is going to be blessed with a lovely new hot water tank, furnace, and air conditioner.) The finished product is beautiful, but to me it's still just a house and I'm not sad to part with it.

I'm not attached to any house that I've lived in.  My last few years of living in my first Akron home were painful and traumatic and I couldn't get out of there fast enough. I still own it (thanks 2008) but I can't bear to be inside it.  I never cared for my childhood home in Seven Hills. That's nothing against my family, but the house itself just wasn't my style.  We moved to Seven Hills just before I started the first grade and I never really felt like I fit in there. Plus, it's been redone so many times that even though my parents still live there, it doesn't feel like the house I grew up in.  And I guess I was just too young to be attached to the house we lived in before that.

It's something to think about as we start seriously looking for our next house.  Do houses help shape who we are?  Is there something about them that is intangible, that can make a difference? Should I be looking at more than kitchens and dining rooms and whether or not there is wallpaper that I have to tear down? Do people build houses, or do houses, as Miranda Lambert says, build us?

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