I am not sure that I have fully grasped the concept of bittersweet until now. I don’t think I have mourned without the death of someone. I know I have experienced pain. I know I have regretted in my life. I have also been filled with joy. I have enjoyed many pleasant days in my life. Today……..they collided!
Creating Sweet Flower Home has been such a pleasure to document the building of the new farmhouse. I have many more posts to share with you. We have been living in the farmhouse for several months now. It is not yet cozy and comfortable like our old house. Yet we have kept ourselves busy with the moving into the new and preparing the old house to be sold. We have spent countless hours praying that the Lord would bring just the right buyer for the house. So along came the one. The only one to make a firm offer. We accepted. We were delighted. We dilligently moved, cleaned, repaired, spruced up the house to be the perfect house for our buyer. Wow! Did I stay busy trying to keep up two houses! Busy, busy, busy until we were done. Done. Finished. It was exhausting and felt so good to leave the house all ready for the new owner. Then it happened……I had to go back and leave keys and garage door openers. Hospitality is always on my mind and I wanted the new owner to feel welcome. So I figured I’d get a nice flower arrangement and write him a little short, sweet Welcome Home letter.
Sitting at my desk in my beautiful new farmhouse I typed out the letter. With each sentence came tears. Unexpected on my part. I thought I was so happy and relieved to sell the house! I was….and am. It was just much harder than I ever thought to give it up! Our kids have mentioned over the course of building the new house how much they were going to miss the old house. I knew I would too, but I kept reassuring them that it would be okay and that their children will have the memories of growing up in Nani and Pop’s farmhouse. “Yes, we know, but we did love that house” they would say. The kids were the ones 17 years ago that didn’t want to leave the old house then and move into the new one! It took two weeks after we could move in before we actually did!
The Hammond Lane house was the house that I had dreamed of building. I had always had in my mind what I wanted it to look like. When Gary and I got married we bought houses and fixed them up and moved to another. We eventually had enough money to buy a lot and my creative brain kicked into gear! It would be another couple of years for us to gather the money to begin building and for me to put together plans. I drew them out on graph paper. Each box was a foot. I drew everything to scale. I drew and erased lines hundreds of times. I would look through books and magazines for ideas. Folks this was way before HGTV and Fixer Upper! I just kept dreaming in those little boxes with my #2 pencil until I finally got it where I wanted it. Then we found a builder who would be my general but I got to be a part of the day to day building! I loved every minute of the build process! And before you know it my paper dream was now a home with beautiful pine poles, saltillo floors, vibrant colors and my touch on every inch of that home!
We wanted to be sure that the house was comfortable and welcoming to all who came through the doors. We built it for our family and to entertain others and that’s what we did! So when I walked into that empty house for the last time it didn’t seem empty. It was filled with our life. Our memories. I could see all the furniture where I might have moved it on any given day. I walked into the family room and sat on the fireplace ledge. And I began to cry. That’s where all the kids stood with their homecoming dates and I took pictures. The skinny jean clad Christian bands stood there so I could click a picture of them. I would scoot my chair up close in the winter so I could put my feet closer to the fire. That’s where my never quite cute Christmas stockings hung.
I couldn’t take it another minute so I retreated to the girl’s bedroom. It only got worse. I could lay down on the window seat and see out the window through my tears to the front yard where we looked for so many Easter eggs! Then looking back into their room I could see all the different way we arranged the bunk beds as they grew. I can see all the hair products and makeup spread across the room while the prom dresses hung on the door. The girls and all their friends so excited for their night out! I remember my Dad telling me when Torey left to college that it was a sad time because you no longer have your kids living at home as a family anymore. I could see what the room looked like when Whitney got married and left for Washington. That was my first taste of bittersweet. Torey and I cried and drug ourselves around the room all day. Then we got her a new bedroom set…..the room now only had one occupant. Then it happened. Torey got married and moved to Tennessee. The bedroom set was gone and now there were no more permanent occupants. I didn’t really have any pictures of the room in my memories after that.
I lifted myself off the cushion like I was 100 years old and walked to Jacob’s room. On the wall the tin panels begged me to recall when he went to football camp and I redecorated his room with big raw galvanized tin panels. It was a great moment when he came home and saw his new room! All those times he came home from practice after school to his cozy boy room were flying through my memories like birds in a hurricane. The life sized cut out of John Wayne lived in his room. Grandpa Wayland gave him that. He always had boots and jeans and sports gear everywhere. He left home to move to Oregon for a job, but it was still his room until he got married. Then it was the guest room. We always seemed to have guests.
Walking into the foyer at the front of the house with a hand painted scene of a bench and a village in the background was the pivot point of the house. You could either go the kitchen, family room and kids room or you could go to my room. But when you walked in the door that is the scene you saw 15 feet in front of you. Perfect picture backdrop! I walked into the cozy living room and sat on a pony wall at the entrance and immediately pictured the Christmas tree in front of the big window at the front of the house! So many Christmas’ in that little room with the kids wildly opening presents……sometimes liking them sometimes not……but always happy to be with us. Our little sweet family sometimes had visitors for Christmas morning, sometimes not. But we always had so much fun. And food. The piano that was my mother’s was always a source of happiness or loud banging depending on who was tickling the ivories. On the couch against the wall looking towards the window I could see Gary and I sitting there one late night when a teenage boy came over because he had just been beaten by his mom. We loved that kid sitting quietly on the couch as we prayed for guidance. The memories were more than I could bear so I reluctantly went to our bedroom.
In our bedroom I could do nothing but crumple in the middle of the floor and sob. So many memories here! Where I was laying is where my nephew Sam would jump and roll and play while I got dressed at the bathroom vanity. My grandsons Grady, Cooper and Lucas would turn flips and wrestle with Gary in this very spot! The two chairs that were in the bay window was where we had so many talks as parents to our kids when life needed some extra time. Gary and I would retreat to the chairs when we needed time to talk too! Tucked away in our room for three nights Gary and I held each other and cried ourselves to sleep when we found out he had cancer but didn’t know what kind. Our room was a safe place from the world when we were tired or sad. It was also the center of the house when we had lots of family over and everyone was getting ready to go somewhere! By this point my emotions had overtaken me and I could only cry on the floor until I had to get up and throw up in the bathroom one last time. Not glamourous, but true. I remember some other rough nights in there too! The worst part of that was I got a look at myself in my long bathroom mirror and saw my bloodshot eyes and hurting heart. I did not linger there! I stood at the doorway of the room and remembered how much I loved being in there!
I moved through the hall and back into the kitchen for one last touch of the granite island! There have been so many mouths fed here! The untold number of high school athletes, church youth groups, friends, family and many strangers have all passed through this kitchen! We have had late night dance parties, chubby bunny contests, birthday parties, showers, weddings, and holidays from this beautiful kitchen. The family table sat just in front of the window and it was always declared a “safe place” for anyone sitting there. We sat so many hours at that table enjoying someone’s company that we are so thankful for! More tears streamed down so I left and went outside to the porch swing for one last watching of the sunset from my beautiful back yard. I remembered the porch being transformed for Jenna’s wedding shower. I remembered the big high school Great Gatsby graduation party that we had for Torey and Robert and several of their friends. I remembered all the pool parties for youth and then the young moms and their kids hanging out at the pool. I could see my Dad shooting the new bow and arrow that my brother Chris got for his girls for Christmas. The roping dummies, the remote control cars and Sierra in her pink jeep driving through the yard were all as bright as day as the sun slowly dipped below the horizon.
I knew it was time to get myself out of the house before it got dark. That would be more than my fragile emotions could handle. The whole time I was in the house visiting with my memories I constantly thanked the Lord for each of them and the multitude that I don’t remember. But I know we really lived in this home. This is where our children hold so many memories from kids to teenagers, to college students, to young married and to parents. My youngest daughter Torey told me “that house was where I felt the safest and most comfortable in the world.” We did travel the world and were always happy to come home to Hammond Lane. We grew well in God’s Grace here as a family. Seventeen years is not a lifetime, but Gary and I love to live as much of life in a moment that we can. So we have closed the chapter on the Hammond Lane house and now begin the next at the Sweet Flower Home Farmhouse. With the Lord’s blessing we will dedicate this home to Him and will begin to make this a cozy, safe, comfortable home that we can share the love of Christ in. I am looking forward to all the memories we will create here with our grandchildren, family, friends and strangers! I do have a thankful heart that our Hammond Lane house sold and wish love and laughter to live in the walls of that home. I am comforted by the thought that in our farmhouse we are already wrapped in scripture and love from our Farmhouse Blessing.
Bittersweet is just that. A bit a pain sprinkled with joy. Time does seem to fade pain and joy only gets brighter as life goes on. So I know God’s plan for us is going to be an adventure! Thank you all for touring my memories with me! I hope you all love your home wherever it may be!
Carrie
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