Memories

Kim and I met with a real estate agent today to discuss a dreaded subject: selling our mom's house.

Selling the homestead is a difficult decision and one we have put off making for a year now. Eddy, Kim and I grew up in that house. I was 5 years old when my folks bought the Cape Cod style home in 1956, and for nearly 50 years it has been in our family.

My mother could never part with it. Even when she became older and we'd suggest that she sale it and buy something a bit smaller, she'd get misty-eyed and say that there were just too many memories there to leave. So she stayed there until she died.

There are many happy memories and fun times associated with it. I remember my mom in shorts and a tank top tending to her flower beds and vegetable garden; us kids playing hide and go seek at twilight with neighbor kids; riding my bike as fast as I could down our street listening to the sound of the cards that I'd clothes pinned onto the spokes click out their own rhythm; Eddy's tadpole "farm" in a big galvanized tub which he sat in the backyard one summer; my cousin and I dancing to Little Eva's hit "Locomotion"; lying in the cool grass on a hot summer's day eating concord grapes, apples, pears and plums grown in our yard; playing in the swimming pool; running through the sprinklers while dad watered the lawn; placing our footprints in the cold wet cement of the new patio dad built (which are still there today); choosing up teams and playing baseball, and last but not least all the holidays and birthdays that were celebrated there. These are just a few of the wonderful memories I have associated with that home.

The home comes with enough property that if split up could provide two additional lots besides the one the house sits on. It could turn out to be a tidy little profit for my siblings and myself, but it seems somehow sacrilegious to do that. It's a decision that we'll have to think about and talk through with Eddy.

I would much prefer that another nice family move in and have the opportunity to make their own memories there as we did.

There isn't enough money to buy the ones we share.