My older brother turned 40 a few days ago, and my parents celebrated 43 years of marriage the day before that. They were all back at Mom and Dad’s house in Ontario, the house that I grew up in from the age of 8 until I was married and off living in my own house. The house that we all came back to for Christmases, Easter, birthdays, Sunday dinners, major celebrations and sometimes just because we wanted to sit on that deck in the backyard overlooking the beautiful garden.
I love that house. Everyone in my family did. But it’s sold now and for the first time in just over 30 years, my parents are on their way to live somewhere else. After all, a house that can hold a family of two parents and seven kids is a lot of house for just two people to rattle around in. It’s too big for them now, and we have all scattered so far that it’s not a regular occurance anymore that we all come home for the holidays. The seven of us are now stretched across four provinces and one overseas in London England. We’re everywhere.
So, in reading the little comments by my brother about being ‘back home’ for possibly the last time and seeing the update of friends that we mutually share talking about reconnecting for his birthday party on the weekend, I’ve been feeling more and more nostalgiac for one more day at their house. A day which sadly, I know now will not come. There simply isn’t the time (or the money) for me to go back. I have a new job, I have any and all ‘other’ money I might have had for a flight taken up in trying to sell our old house and my parents leave next week for vacation for a month. By the time they get home, they will only have a month left to pack up and move out.
I said to my Dad that it would be a really great idea for all of us to write some of our favourite memories of that house. Because we all have them. The great memories, the hilarious ones, the sad ones. I want to share a few of them here as I’ve been collecting them in my head for a while now.
When we were all younger, my parents rarely got a babysitter for us, which isn’t surprising, seven kids is a lot to handle. But I do remember one occasion when they hired an unsuspecting teenager to come to the house for the night while they went to a dinner party with friends. Poor girl, she never stood a chance.
Our house was an old house, so old that there were holes in the ceiling, slightly smaller around than a dinner plate, so that back when the house was heated by fire, the hot air could get to the upstairs rooms. There was one in the kitchen, one in the dining room and one in the living room. We convinced this poor girl that our house was haunted. Then, when we went “to bed”, we snuck into the rooms that had the holes to the downstairs, and took turns dropping tiny pebbles of loose plaster through them, so that small noises happened all over the downstairs, freaking her out to the point of her calling her parents.
She never came back to babysit.
Ever.
For a little while there, my hubs and I became obsessed with the original Iron Chef, the japanese show, not the american version that later came on. We introduced the family to it and presto! Iron Chef challenge. For a little over a year, about three or four times a year we would all get together and have an Iron Chef night. At first, we wrote down ingredients and pulled two of them out of a hat. We had the onion and cheese challenge (EPIC good food), the pork and tomato challenge, the mint and chocolate challenge. They we did countries. I can distinctly remember a meal there one night with not only the siblings, but my aunts and cousins as well, each of us representing a different country’s cuisine. Italy, France, Thailand, England, Spain. Good lord the memories of that food still makes me drool a little. My family has always been into amazing home cooked meals (a memory of that house unto itself) but the years of Iron Chef were something of a stand out.
My Nana. Still now, after so many years, I still miss her. She’s been gone nearly 20 years and yet there are days when I miss her like she just left us yesterday. One of my greatest memories of all is shortly after my oldest Liam was born, we brought Nana up to the house. She was in her wheelchair, her fingers bent inwards by the arthritis, her frame tiny. And yet…she asked to hold her first great grandchild. There is a photo somewhere (I lost where it went after her funeral) of myself, my dad, Nana and baby Liam curled up on her lap. Four generations. It is still to this day one of my favourite memories that took place in that house. It will likely always be.
We had house concerts, one day sitting on the front porch in the rain, my brother on his guitar, another brother on the bodhran, singing and playing music. Ceili’s on the front yard. My wedding, in the middle of a blizzard, the reception held in the house.
I could keep going on, but I will save the rest for the memory stories for my parents.
A house is so much more than the bricks and roof that hold it together. A home has a pulse, a heartbeat. That beautiful red brick on 80 Colborne St with the big yard and the trees whose roots made perfect fire places when playing dolls as little girls, the hedges that cried out for forts and hide and seek, the library at that back with the big picture window, the kitchen where we all practically lived and the back stairs, that was my house and my home for so much of my life. Even though I have now lived in other homes for longer than I lived there, it was always the place I came back to.
I look forward to the new house my parents have and imprinting its walls with the love and the laughter of their grandchildren. We have a lot to do to fill it, but I know that there is more than enough love to spare.
And I wish a long and happy life to the new family who is inheriting this treasure of a home from my parents. May your walls reverberate with laughter and song, may the kitchen warm you with light, love and sumptuous meals, may the stars shine at you every night as you lay your heads to rest in the beautiful bedrooms where we once played.
This is not a goodbye. This is a thank you. For as long as I have these memories, this home will always be a part of my heart and my life.
[…] up here, over the next few weeks or so, maybe. Meanwhile, here’s my sister Nuala’s very fine story of what our house meant to us. Also, if you will excuse the hucksterism, here is a selection from my 2010 book, Circles of […]
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[…] the family, all write something of memory to give to my parents about that house and, apart from a blog post I wrote here about a month and a half ago, I’ve had a hard time actually sitting down and […]
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