Leave the Light On

Dear Warren Family,

We were really moved by your letter expressing interest in buying our home. Of the people that made offers, you were the only ones to appeal to us directly like that. Apart from the fact that your husband is a carpenter, like me, and a veteran, like my Dad, what put you over the top was that you had so much enthusiasm and appreciation for the house that it kind of bowled us over. It reminded me of how Lindsay and I were when we found out that our seventeen-month odyssey into home-buying had at last reached its fruition, twelve years ago.

Day One.

I know that you’re first-time homebuyers, just as we were when we first found Ol’ 425, and it’s possible that you have even more exuberance than we did when we first moved in. Although I think that’s mostly because of how much work was out in front of us. It seemed almost insurmountable, but we had dollar signs in our eyes back in those halcyon days of quick flips and quick bucks, and we thought we’d be in and out in a year. That was a nice few months when it actually seemed like that was going to be the case. I guess life really is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.

The vision you laid out of how you’d use the various spaces was really nice to read, although it’s a little surreal talking to someone about how they plan to spread their lives out in the places that we used to eat and play and lay our heads. But for some reason, I kind of like it. It makes it seem like the house is stationary in time, while we live our lives flowing around it. Coming and going, buying and selling, living and dying while this tiny, unassuming cracker-box stands as a bulwark between us and the world. Giving us a warm light to gather round, just a little something against the wind. In return, we paint it this color or that, caulk the gaps, patch this and that, clean the gutters, and water the lawn. Or not, depending.

The idea that what we think of as the Office will become your sewing room was really satisfying to read, since we really just tossed an IKEA desk in there, slapped a printer on it, and called it an “office.” I guess I pictured my wife doing the bills at that desk, but she wound up doing those at the kitchen table like everyone else in the world, or on her laptop in the big easy chair in the Living Room as the world has moved on to its PayPals and its Venmos. Three years after we moved in, I started my own construction company and actually had need of an office then, but I still wound up sitting on the living room floor and spreading out the work orders, invoices, and bills in a fan around me, and hacking away for days on end. So the Office never did live up to our expectations (more like delusions) about how life would pass. I guess nothing else did either, come to think of it.

Eventually, the business moved into a shop/office suite out in the Western Badlands, and we admitted to ourselves that the Office was really more like a catch-all where my wife’s workout equipment and my guitars lived. Along with anything else we couldn’t think what to do with. That door was always closed when company came around, so we could pretend to be civilized human beings instead of admitting that we were raised by wolves. Unless the visitors were family. In which case we threw an inflatable mattress down on the floor and shoehorned them in, because no one can stick it to you like family. Yeah, I think the hum of a sewing machine might really improve the space. Someone truly inhabiting the room, filling it with life, is just the change this old girl needs. You have our blessing. Not that you need it. This is your place now.

It’s nice to think of your grandkids coming to stay in your/our Guest Room, because our homes—even simple nine-hundred-sixty square foot boxes—are made for lives to happen in. I always loved it when my sister and nephews would come for a visit. I’d be the last one out of bed on a Saturday, listening to the sound of my wife and sister chattering away and the kitchen, while the smell of coffee and bacon beckoned me from my womb of blankets, and there would come the patter of the kids’ stockinged feet tearing up and down the hall to do the long slide into the living room, like I taught them. Their mom, my sister, hated that, because they brought the practice home with them. But I always considered it my job as Funcle (fun uncle) to teach them all the possible ways to drive mom crazy.

That gorgeous Mahogany floor Lindsay and I put in has certainly garnered a lot of praise over the years, and I’m glad that you found it so appealing. It’s just slippery enough in socks to be fun for kids of all ages, so maybe your grandkids (or you!) will find equally as amusing. Word of advice, though: be careful what kind of furniture you put by the kitchen pantry cabinet. If the kids (or you!) don’t stop in time, whatever you put there will be the thing that arrests their slide. For us, it was our entertainment center. May we suggest a sofa, instead?

What we rarely mention about that gorgeous floor is that, although it’s supposed to be a “hardwood,” we discovered the hard way that the Mahogany is a thin veneer, and a soft one at that. The first time the TV remote fell off the arm of the couch and made the tiniest dent in the otherwise pristine floor, we both almost cried. After that, we immediately turned into those annoying people who make you take your shoes off when you come to their house. That douchey metamorphosis was a bit embarrassing, but we spent so much time and energy down on our hands and knees installing all that flooring, cramming it in over one weekend, that any injury to it was like a physical blow to us. It was the first construction project Lindsay had ever been a part of, and she discovered how brutal the process really was.

So when we ran a little shy of glue toward the end, we were so completely exhausted that another trip to the store seemed like the Bataan Death March, and we tried to make what we had stretch instead. That was a mistake. That squeak you hear over in the corner by the front door is the result of skimping on the glue. Sorry about that. If it’s any consolation, I had to hear that squeak every time I sat down or got up off the couch for over a decade, a constant reminder of my mistake. It seems much louder at night, or any time you get up off the couch to sneak a snack out of the fridge. And by the way, the squeak in front of the sink is my friend Tony’s fault. Dude couldn’t swing a hammer to save his life, so the tile-backer right there isn’t quite nailed off as hard as it should be. I shouldn’t complain, the guy was doing us a solid at a time when we were completely overwhelmed. Still, I’m glad he’s a psychologist today, so the world isn’t counting on him having any hand-eye coordination.

We aren’t the most naturally hospitable people in the world, kind of preferring each other’s company and our solitude to a busy house. No kids, no pets, and the houseplants are not thriving. That’s partly due to Lindsay’s fastidious nature and how nice the house has to be for people to come over to stay, but mostly due to there being just the one bathroom in the house. That’s a lot of pressure on one toilet. In eighteen years together, Lindsay and I have never had two bathrooms, which is a situation we are eager to remedy upon the transfer of our home to you. Word to the wise, when you’re in there always turn on the fan. Since the bathroom is right in the heart of the house, perfectly positioned between bedrooms and common areas, if that fan isn’t on, the whole house is in there with you.

In spite of that, we still hosted friends and family alike over the years, and all of them slept better in the Guest Room than we ever did when that mattress was in our Master. My sister thinks it’s a magic mattress, but every time my snoring (or cigar smoking) got me banished to the Guest Room, I always woke up with a crick in my neck. The couch is much better for banishment purposes, as white trash as that sounds. What the hell, it’s Springfield—aka Sprintucky. No need to put on airs.

The neighborhood has certainly improved over the twelve years that we’ve found ourselves here. That’s good, because when we thought our nest-egg was going into a get-rich-quick flip like on HGTV, a bit of blue-collar blight was of no concern to us. But the economy collapsed like…an hour after we bought the place? OK, it was six months, but fifty thousand dollars of home value evaporated overnight, taking our nest-egg with it, and suddenly we felt marooned in a marginal part of a crappy town.

The house next to ours—whose appalling condition we leveraged to reduce the purchase price of Ol’ 425 and get our closing costs covered—began to seem like a bomb that was continually going off. It was a complete shit-heap, and was slated for demolition by the city because unpaid taxes had triggered a foreclosure, which in turn caused them to stop paying their bills, which got the utilities turned off. At which point, they abandoned it with all of the windows open, and it became a den of offal for raccoons, stray cats and dogs, and the occasional nutria. It smelled like hell and appeared to be receding into loam day by day. The sibling owners apparently didn’t open the garage door when they backed out of it to leave for the last time, because it was burst out from the inside. Our next door neighbors, ladies and gentlemen.

But since then, the dozens of houses throughout the neighborhood around us that were in foreclosure, with crispy brown lawns, Sheriff’s eviction notices pasted to the door, and walls ripped out for their copper, have recovered. Including the one next door. Families came in and bought them at the low point of their sale value—as opposed to their apex like we did—or for pennies on the dollar from banks desperate to unload them, and have made a go of building their lives here. And, really, that’s what makes a neighborhood good. Not fancy landscaping or Roman columns out front, but a group of people sincerely committed to building their lives amongst others doing the same. Raising our kids, mowing our lawns, shooting off firecrackers on the Fourth of July. Summer barbecues, other people’s annoying weekend projects that start way too early on a Saturday, and the occasional party that runs too long and too loud. Like Alejandro’s Easter Bash of ’09, or my fortieth birthday party in 2011.

By the way, I hope you like those 4th of July fireworks, because this neighborhood sounds like Iwo Jima for a week before and after, and like the end of the world the day of. But overall, it’s a pretty great area, despite the somewhat outré appearance of some of the denizens and domiciles. There’s never been any crime in our little circle. No cars broken into, no Amazon packages stolen. Which is nice, because before we replaced the garage door and opener, it used to open up randomly after we left for work or while we slept, and would then stand open all day or all night, depending. Zero problems. Unless you count a couple of teens screaming at their parents and slamming doors as they tore out of the house, or the Pastor directly across the cul-de-sac getting a divorce and dying alone in his own little cracker-box.

Over the years, we’ve watched as the neighborhood kids that rang the bell to sell us candy bars and beef jerky for school fundraisers began driving cars and playing their damn rock-n-roll music (or rap, as the case may be) at all hours. As our three hundred sixty five day plan bled into thousands of days, we watched Ricardo’s son Abel go from racing his go-cart around the cul-de-sac to becoming a budding entrepreneur, asking to rake our leaves to earn some pocket money. In that same forty-three-hundred day period, a half-dozen houses in this blue-collar burg have been knocked down and rebuilt, and two dozen more have had face-lifts. Since spending all these years here, I’ve discovered two things: Nothing makes me feel older than other people’s kids, and that any lawn mowing or house painting in a neighborhood are the adult-equivalent of peer pressure.

It’s fair to say that, had we only known, we never would have chosen to stay here as long as we have. Actually, had we known that the bottom was about to drop out of the world, that everyone was about to lose their job, and even the banks were about to lose their shit, we never would have bought at all. If only there had been some sign, some omen warning us off. A harbinger of doom that could have alerted us that we were headed down a path fraught with peril. Like, say, spending seventeen fruitless months in the market, losing six bidding wars to Californians who were buying houses in bulk, sight unseen. Or maybe the reckless availability of one hundred percent financing for every tap-dancing pimp who could legibly sign his name. Yeah, if only.

Still, we pressed on until we found Ol’ 425. By then we’d about worn our poor realtor out, and now have the dubious distinction of being her longest running clients. By the time we found this old girl, we knew the market so well that we could tell exactly which houses were in the railroad cancer-zone and which were double-wides, based solely on square footage and zip code. We looked at houses built on no foundation, houses with illegal garage additions, and patio-covers consisting of camper-shells grafted on with spray-foam and caulk. Even one with a tree growing up out of the floor. And still those places sold for top dollar. Insane.

When we found Ol’ 425, she was in decline, to be sure. There was a rotting wheelchair ramp out front for Melvin and Violet Elving, the Baptist Minister couple who spent their final days here. Their kids were pretty motivated to sell, because the plywood siding was delaminating, the paint was flaking off like dandruff, and the whole thing was an inexplicable aqua blue. The inside was like Easter exploded, with aqua, avocado, mustard, neon-rust, and baby poop all coming together in a perfect storm of why the 70’s should have been the end of human civilization. But the bones were good. Every single aesthetic thing needed to be changed, from the popcorn ceiling to the hideous shag carpet, and virtually everything in between. The windows, the doors, the trim, the siding, the deck, the counters, the shower. Just…Every. Fucking. Thing. But she was straight, didn’t leak, and the Elvings were the very first people to own it, making us just the second in forty years, so it was still the best thing to come along in seventeen months. The prospect of living in AC for the first time in our marriage didn’t hurt either. So we bought the old Aqua Monster (as we called it) and started the long process of bringing her forward in time with us.

Back then, we didn’t know how to read the tea leaves, or interpret the signs. We thought it was heroic to overcome obstacles and stay the course, no matter the resistance. After all, you gotta prove that you’ve got the mettle to meet life’s challenges before you find your reward, right? I guess that’s probably true sometimes, but just as often, you gotta recognize that not every brick wall needs you to smash your head into it either. Some walls have doors in them that you can walk right through. Others, you just aren’t meant to see the other side of. Nonetheless, with enough tenacity—and brain-cells to spare—you can usually force the issue and make it through almost any barrier. Which is how we found ourselves occupying Ol’ 425. I’ve heard it said that God always answers prayers. Sometimes it’s yes, sometimes it’s no. Sometimes it’s…wait. Not yet. Soon, but not yet. Because the right thing at the wrong time is the wrong thing. We could have bought 425 (or a thousand other, better places) within six months for tens of thousands fewer dollars if we’d had the wisdom to see the difference between tenacity and stubbornness.

Still, if you’re going to be saddled with a consolation prize, you could do a lot worse than Ol’ 425. So we made a go of it. We had a life here. I started a construction company in the teeth of the worst recession in our lifetimes (in the worst-hit industry and the state in which that industry took its hardest blow) and made it four years before shuttering the doors. It was during the lulls of unemployment in the slow winter months that my business partner and lifelong friend, Ron, and I replaced all the exterior trim, windows, and siding, just to keep from going stir crazy, or spiraling into depression. My fortieth birthday bash was held in a tent out back, with guitar amplifiers and a river of Jaegermeister, for which august occasion I painted the siding that had been left fallow for eighteen months. Being rid of the multi-colored pre-primed siding (otherwise known as Springfield Camouflage) was a relief to my wife, even though the ultimate color was a bit of a disappointment. Don’t worry, We’ve repainted again since then with a more pleasing palette, which we hope you enjoy. I had you in mind when I chose it, even before we’d ever heard the name Warren.

Just as we had you in mind during a thousand other big and little projects, as we tightened, cleaned, repaired, patched, caulked, touched-up, or replaced entirely a host items all around the house, as we prepared her to become someone’s home. Yours, as it turns out. All the little things I could have and should have done for us years ago, just to make living here a wee bit nicer. Things like cleaning out the lint in the dryer exhaust line, scraping off speckles of excess grout on the cabinet toe-kicks from when we tiled the kitchen, or changing out that greasy-ass ghetto hood-vent over the stove to something that doesn’t sound like a helicopter taking off from the deck of an aircraft carrier. Even before we knew you, we wanted this to be a place of rest and refuge, as much a blessing for you as it was for us, but easier.

A place here you wouldn’t have to tear out any rot, replace any appliances, or chase any leaks down in the crawl-space. Where you could just come home and put your feet up. Or maybe do something fun, like add some curtains and a flower-box to the window at the kitchen sink, like I always wished we had. Why I didn’t see fit to do those things when it was for our own lives, I’ll never know. At least we got to enjoy those little touches for a couple of months. We joke that now that the improvements have been made, it’s much more enjoyable to live here again and now we don’t want to leave. But escrow is escrow, and that second bathroom is calling. So we’ve gone around and blessed the lintels and all four corners of the house, and now leave we will.

Of course, we did make some improvements for ourselves and our own enjoyment, once we’d realized we’d be here for the long-haul. Others we made strictly for the re-sale value, and some because we just plain had no choice. We hosted some of Lindsay’s high school friends as they toured the state in 2013, and as they were departing one of them stepped clean through a rotten spot in the ramp and fell right off the front porch. Thankfully, she wasn’t hurt, but the second their vehicle rounded the corner out of our quiet little cul-de-sac, I grabbed that ramp in my bare hands and straight-up ripped it apart. In so doing, I did away with the last vestiges of Melvin and Violet Elving, with exception of all their beautiful roses. Oh, and that old-school retractable clothes-line out back. Do yourself a favor and dry your bedding out there. Trust me. You can’t buy that smell for love or money. I replaced the Elving ramp with a stoop constructed of pressure treated wood, composite decking, and other materials never intended by nature, so it would be sound for a lifetime. Better living through chemistry, I always say.

I’m sure you’ve experienced the same myriad of things that happen to us all over the course of our lifetimes. The marriages, the births, deaths, Bar Mitzvahs, Quinceaneras, graduations, birthdays, new jobs and the occasional lost dream. I suppose all of those things happen to everyone, everywhere, and no doubt they would have happened to us down the span of years, no matter where we were. When I got the news of my Niece Kailee’s death in June of 2009, it was this living room floor I collapsed onto and began to wail like a man undone. When we got the news of the family births of Clara, Bryan, Noelle, Leon, Alexander, David, Kevin, Gatlin, Marcelle, Levi, Amelia, Evelyn, Rosie, Ellie, and Jade these walls resounded with our hoots and hollers. Many a prayer, many a tear, and many a milestone came to pass here. Just as they would have anywhere else fate had seen fit to deposit us, I guess. But in the end, they happened at Ol’ 425, and that matters to us.

When we discovered in 2010 that the shower wall with the window in it had been leaking for many years and had rotted away to nothing, I bared my teeth and went straight in. I lost my job the day after I ripped the tub and back wall of the house out, so that beautiful tile surround that you commented on was, to me, an act of faith as much as any minute I ever spent in a church pew. I started my company right after finishing that project because literally no one was hiring, so these were the floors I paced at 4:00 AM when I couldn’t sleep from sweating the business bills and staving off foreclosure on the house. Or when I was passing kidney stones in pure agony, when I couldn’t sit or lie down for days on end. The fate of our marriage was decided here, not once but twice. We both had our lives changed by being accepted for career-defining jobs at the University. Toasts with friends, bull-sessions around the kitchen table, living room jam sessions with guitars and ukulele with my Dad, Wife, and good friends. From the momentous to the mundane, from all the back-breaking work to the meager parade of Trick-Or-Treaters we welcome most years, all the little losses and victories that make up a life, happened here in our quiet little cul-de-sac in this unassuming little cracker-box.

They say that every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end, and I’ve learned the wisdom in mourning the little things—the end of beginnings—as they pass. In recognizing the good old days while I’m still in them, before they head into the rearview. Even when they’re replaced by new opportunities, blessings, and challenges that will become the new good old days soon enough, these little endings deserve our attention. So as much as I’m looking forward to that next bigger, better, newer house, no amount of self-closing cabinets, LED lighting, soaking tubs, or home theater rooms will be able to replace the affection that I have for Ol’ 425. Although that extra bathroom will be a close second. And even though I hope I never have to lift a finger to do more than add some decorative flair or a fun weekend-project on the next place, I will never get over how much love we poured into this, the first place that we ever called our own. Nor will I likely be able to replicate the amount of time, energy, and effort anywhere else, because I was a young man when we started, and I’m a middle-aged bureaucrat as we move on to the next. So you, Warren Family, are now just the third owners of Ol' 425, and the caretakers of my best work.

The mistakes and foibles represent the best we knew how at the time, or at least the best we could do in a given moment in time. So please forgive me for the squeaks, the little puckered spot in the carpet-pad in the Master, and that one door on the Kitchen cabinet under the sink that doesn’t quite close without a little extra oomph. They don’t make that exact same 60s hinge anymore, and the next best thing is off by about a millimeter. Close, but not quite. Also, we found out that the broken couch spring had been gouging the Living Room floor the same way you’re discovering it now, by surprise. Sorry about that. I sanded, stained, and refinished the spot, but there’s no hiding it completely in a floating floor like this one. Realistically though, with that stupid fireplace where it is, there’s really nowhere else to put the couch anyway. No doubt yours will cover it, the same as ours, and out of sight is out of mind, right?

A couple of last things before we lock the door behind us and toss the key under the mat: Keep an eye out for Maxi-cat before you start the sprinklers, he likes to sleep in the little hollow around the base of the Dogwood tree out front. Those beautiful apple trees in the back yard are going to start dropping apple bombs about a month after you move in, and keep going all the way to November, and they’ll probably number somewhere around two-thousand. They’re sour and wormy, but there’s a horse two blocks down on the left that will love you for them. If you leave them to lie, you’ll have an apple-sauce lawn for months afterward. I never minded, but it drove Lindsay crazy. That’s how I know they drop two thousand apples a year. She counts them as she’s dispensing with them. Because of course she does.

Also, you may want a pellet gun to discourage the Gaze of Raccoons (that’s what a group of them is called) from getting too comfy approaching the house. I’m afraid their squatter’s rights under the shed are pretty much grandfathered in, but they know the deal. Don’t let them push you around. I made that mistake one summer and wound up having to put a few rounds in one of their butts to keep them from destroying the screen door. After that, they went back to making their nightly crossings—which trigger the security light in the back yard and leave that trail along the fence-line—at a respectful distance. We eyeball each other every night at 11:00p as they go by, but thus far the détente remains. Good luck with that. Hold the line.

Day Four-Thousand-Four-Hundred-Thirty-One

If we’re being honest, since you’re in your fifties and this is your first home, with a thirty-year mortgage, who knows, this may well be the place that the kids and grandkids say goodbye to you, while your belongings are shuffled about to make room for the next family of first-timers. This, too, happens to us all. But may it be on the far side of decades of Thanksgivings, Christmases, birthdays, babysitting the grandkids so mom and dad can have a date-night, and ten thousand quiet evenings with a good book and the dog warming your feet. We never once had a fire in that hearth, but I’m betting that if we’d have had a dog, we would have. I hope that you do, because every part of a house is for living, and I think we might have missed out on that bit. We may not be ending our days in this place, but we still count the ones spent here among the best of our lives.

They say life is what happens while we’re busy making other plans. Well, I say that life has to happen to us somewhere, and there are worse places you could do that than Ol’ 425. So take care of her for us, and for the ones that come after. Blessings to the Warren Family. We’ll leave the light on for you.

Elliotts out.