Ah, lowly little house, humble home. A small space, an aged place. Eighty-seven years now you have stood here, a stone's throw from the growing skyline of downtown.
I've often wondered how many lives you've played host to in nearly a century: how many young housewives knelt to scrub your wooden floors; how many couples spent warm passionate nights within your bedrooms; how many children have run, laughing, through your rooms and around your yard; how many families have gathered for a holiday feast prepared by loving hands in your kitchen?
Eighty-seven years you've stood here, and for the last three our family has called you home. We moved in one windy weekend in March, my husband and I with five children: the big kids aged fifteen, twelve, ten, and the littles aged two and fourteen months. We hauled in our couch and six beds, a dining table and an antique china hutch, dozens of toys and hundreds (thousands?) of books.
We've rearranged your rooms over the years, interchanging the living and dining rooms as needs demanded, sectioning off the back end of the kitchen to create a make-shift fourth bedroom, moving kids from one bedroom to another and back again.
We've celebrated twenty-one birthdays and three Christmases here, moved up from one to teenager to three, grown our youngest baby into a preschooler.
To be sure, we've had our complaints while living here: splinters from old wooden floors, lack of storage space, hoarder neighbors, the inconvenience of the one single bathroom's location between two bedrooms, soil full of rocks, and a bathtub that has sunk a full two inches due to foundation issues.
But all in all, Yellow House, I have loved you. I have pictured what you must have looked like in your glorious 1930s newness. I have learned all your various old-house creaks and groans, trained myself not to step on the squeaky spots in your floors, and memorized the patterns of shadows through your wide windows and onto the floors and walls as the sun makes its way across the sky.
I have watched the mulberry tree in the backyard drop berries by the thousands three springs in a row, and watched the sugarberry trees out front drop a carpet of yellow leaves for three autumns. I have inhaled the scent of the onion grass that grows out back and smiled at the tiny Asiatic dayflowers and purple Thai basil and mock strawberries that grow wild along the fence line and the edges of the house. I have observed the yearly frolics of the neighborhood squirrels and the mating birds - a cardinal pair, a bluejay pair, a mockingbird pair, countless sparrows and wrens, and - new this past spring - a pair of doves that took up residence in our yard for a few weeks. I have given names to the neighborhood cats and even once exclaimed over a possum who decided to explore the front porch.
We grew our first vegetables here - a bumper crop of cucumbers that first year, and for three summers we've added more and more crops to the bounty your yard has yielded us. We've trained climbing roses to cover the rails of your lovely porch, and we've spent countless hours sitting on that porch, watching the little ones play and swing in the shade of your trees.
Your sidewalk has hosted many a game of hopscotch and provided the canvas for a hundred chalk masterpieces. Little ones have learned to ride bicycles along your front walk and countless races have been run around your walls.
Your living room has held family movie nights, Mario Kart tournaments, and Christmas morning excitement. Your kitchen has produced many meals, cakes, cookies; has put up with floured counters and baking-with-kids adventures, sticky floors and more dirty dishes than I care to think about. Your dining room has been the scene of family game nights, school lessons, art projects, and a thousand dinners around the table. Your bathroom - that poor bathroom - has suffered little ones potty training, boys without aim, girls dying their hair a myriad of colors, hair cuts and face shaves; your tub holding splashing children and relaxing mommies. Your bedrooms have held children playing, babies sleeping, teens with loud music, parents who fall exhausted into each other's arms at the end of the day.
Three years is but a tiny portion of your history, Yellow House, but it is the time in which your story and ours intersected, overlapped. Your have been more than just an old house on a shaded street in a dying neighborhood, you have been our home, for better and for worse.
Now, people have decided that your time is up. You, along with your neighbors, who have stood in the shadow of downtown for the greater part of a century, will be no more. Bulldozers will make quick work of you, and in no time at all an entire neighborhood will become nothing more than a flat plane to be repurposed in the name of progress.
Your time is almost up, dear Yellow House. But before you go, please let me say:
For sheltering us, for holding three years worth of our laughter and tears, for being home:
Thank you.
I've often wondered how many lives you've played host to in nearly a century: how many young housewives knelt to scrub your wooden floors; how many couples spent warm passionate nights within your bedrooms; how many children have run, laughing, through your rooms and around your yard; how many families have gathered for a holiday feast prepared by loving hands in your kitchen?
Eighty-seven years you've stood here, and for the last three our family has called you home. We moved in one windy weekend in March, my husband and I with five children: the big kids aged fifteen, twelve, ten, and the littles aged two and fourteen months. We hauled in our couch and six beds, a dining table and an antique china hutch, dozens of toys and hundreds (thousands?) of books.
We've rearranged your rooms over the years, interchanging the living and dining rooms as needs demanded, sectioning off the back end of the kitchen to create a make-shift fourth bedroom, moving kids from one bedroom to another and back again.
We've celebrated twenty-one birthdays and three Christmases here, moved up from one to teenager to three, grown our youngest baby into a preschooler.
To be sure, we've had our complaints while living here: splinters from old wooden floors, lack of storage space, hoarder neighbors, the inconvenience of the one single bathroom's location between two bedrooms, soil full of rocks, and a bathtub that has sunk a full two inches due to foundation issues.
But all in all, Yellow House, I have loved you. I have pictured what you must have looked like in your glorious 1930s newness. I have learned all your various old-house creaks and groans, trained myself not to step on the squeaky spots in your floors, and memorized the patterns of shadows through your wide windows and onto the floors and walls as the sun makes its way across the sky.
I have watched the mulberry tree in the backyard drop berries by the thousands three springs in a row, and watched the sugarberry trees out front drop a carpet of yellow leaves for three autumns. I have inhaled the scent of the onion grass that grows out back and smiled at the tiny Asiatic dayflowers and purple Thai basil and mock strawberries that grow wild along the fence line and the edges of the house. I have observed the yearly frolics of the neighborhood squirrels and the mating birds - a cardinal pair, a bluejay pair, a mockingbird pair, countless sparrows and wrens, and - new this past spring - a pair of doves that took up residence in our yard for a few weeks. I have given names to the neighborhood cats and even once exclaimed over a possum who decided to explore the front porch.
We grew our first vegetables here - a bumper crop of cucumbers that first year, and for three summers we've added more and more crops to the bounty your yard has yielded us. We've trained climbing roses to cover the rails of your lovely porch, and we've spent countless hours sitting on that porch, watching the little ones play and swing in the shade of your trees.
Your sidewalk has hosted many a game of hopscotch and provided the canvas for a hundred chalk masterpieces. Little ones have learned to ride bicycles along your front walk and countless races have been run around your walls.
Your living room has held family movie nights, Mario Kart tournaments, and Christmas morning excitement. Your kitchen has produced many meals, cakes, cookies; has put up with floured counters and baking-with-kids adventures, sticky floors and more dirty dishes than I care to think about. Your dining room has been the scene of family game nights, school lessons, art projects, and a thousand dinners around the table. Your bathroom - that poor bathroom - has suffered little ones potty training, boys without aim, girls dying their hair a myriad of colors, hair cuts and face shaves; your tub holding splashing children and relaxing mommies. Your bedrooms have held children playing, babies sleeping, teens with loud music, parents who fall exhausted into each other's arms at the end of the day.
Three years is but a tiny portion of your history, Yellow House, but it is the time in which your story and ours intersected, overlapped. Your have been more than just an old house on a shaded street in a dying neighborhood, you have been our home, for better and for worse.
Now, people have decided that your time is up. You, along with your neighbors, who have stood in the shadow of downtown for the greater part of a century, will be no more. Bulldozers will make quick work of you, and in no time at all an entire neighborhood will become nothing more than a flat plane to be repurposed in the name of progress.
Your time is almost up, dear Yellow House. But before you go, please let me say:
For sheltering us, for holding three years worth of our laughter and tears, for being home:
Thank you.
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