Home Sweet Home
I remember when MrZ told me that he was certain the house I grew up in was smaller than the 1400 sq ft apartment we were living in at the time. I thought he was joking. (I’ve never been good at spatial approximations.) He assured me he was not so I called my Dad and said, “Dad? How big is your house?” “Probably just under 1000 sq ft.”
I was shocked. I mean, yeah I lived in that house my whole life, but I was shocked it was so small. Really? Are you sure? “Yes, Kim. I know how big my own house is.”
The funny thing is, he bought it at half that size. When he and my Mom bought it – I was an infant/toddler and it was only the half of the house you see to the RIGHT of the door. He added on the part to the left. I don’t remember the house that small – since he added on almost immediately – but we have the pictures to prove it. 500 sq ft. That’s a small house.
Dad spent his last few weeks referencing how frustrated he was with the house. He had all these plans to make it bigger. Better. And he was experiencing quite a bit of regret over that. Part of him wishing he had just done it already. (There were golf club handles in the yard he was using to survey the property to draft out the floorplan.) While part of him just wished he had settled for a “better” house long ago. Given up on that house. It kinda bothered me that he seemed to be so torn up over that. I mean, we were happy there. He worked a lot. No one expected him to work full time AND build another half of a house. But he expressed his regret nonetheless.
The funny thing? I was NOT happy there for a long time. I hated that house for a large portion of my childhood. I feel like I can say that now that he’s gone. I was not comfortable having friends over until I was old enough to find our strange house interesting. For many years I was just embarrassed it wasn’t like anyone else’s. There was no air-conditioning. Not a central unit, not a window unit. Just fans in the windows. And those were only on at night because why have them on during the day when it was just blowing hot air around? Showering in the summer was almost pointless because you began sweating the second you dried off.
Since there was no central unit, we also had no central heat. We did have one baseboard heater in the living room under a table. We would curl up under that table with blankets during the winter and watch TV together. We also had a fire hazard coil heater we only turned on for Christmas Day (because the tree was always in the part of the house without the baseboard heater), and when it snowed. We turned it on when it snowed because we could lean up against it to warm up after playing in the snow. I learned the hard way though that wet jeans get hot very quickly and had the burns on my ass to prove it.
I had two friends spend the night once in high school. We had a math competition (or something like that) the next day and Dad was driving us early. So, they spent the night. It was cold so we all three bundled up in Dad’s old waterbed (which I claimed as my own because it was HEATED) and giggled all night about HOW DAMN COLD IT WAS. Maybe that’s why I’ve never minded camping. Wasn’t much different than life in that house.
We weren’t poor. That’s not why we lived such a minimalist existence, Dad just wasn’t concerned with trivialities. We could survive without the heat and a/c – so what’s the point in wasting money on it? Other trivialities? Furniture. We anever had a proper couch my entire time through high school. We had bean bags. It’s hard to invite a boyfriend over to watch movies when you only have bean bags on an ugly linoleum floor. Needless to say – I didn’t have boyfriends over often. I was too embarrassed.
Somewhere towards the end of High School, however, I started thinking that maybe my lifestyle was kinda cool. Maybe my unique living situation was something to brag about, and not hide. I thought more and more like that the older I got. I was proud to bring my kids into my childhood home. Teach them how to stay warm in the winter nights (breath heavy under the blanket wrapped around your body like a cocoon) and stay entertained with no cable. I even brought two coworkers by my Dad’s on a trip in college and they both were fascinated by my house. One of them even asked if he could move into the basement he thought it was so cool.
This was my room. And the closet Dad built into the wall because the bedrooms had no closets.
The back of the house.
Now it’s empty. We’ll be handing it off to someone else soon. Someone who will see the cracking plaster and peeled linoleum and not ever know the amazing hands that constructed the frame so many years ago. They’ll probably tear it down and start over, I know I would. And the only thing left will be the pictures and the memories of a father and his two children huddled up watching A-Team together. I feel bad for the years I was embarrassed because it really is something I’m proud of now. The tiny house surrounded by commercially zoned properties filled with warehouses and 18-wheelers. It wasn’t the typical neighborhood nor the typical house that my classmates lived in…I wish I had appreciated that more. Maybe if I had, Dad wouldn’t have carried regret about staying in it for so long.
Either way…it served it’s purpose. Living without air-conditioning in the summer and without heat in the winter became my version of, “walking uphill to school both ways,” with my kids. It gets thrown out to my kids every time the whine about something.
“You’re hot? SERIOUSLY? It’s 71 degrees. That’s not hot! You should try living without air-conditioning in your car OR YOUR HOME. That’s how I grew up, you remember. I would have thanked GOD for 71 degrees.”
Dad would be proud.
oh my god, you make me cry. it’s been almost five years and i still can’t really write about my dad. i thank you for sharing your thoughts, because it’s a little like catharsis.
also, if my parents ever sell the house i grew up in, i think i will vomit.
I think he would be because you grew to appreciate it. Children aren’t the sharpest tool in the shed, so it is okay that you didn’t appreciate it then.
We lived in multiple houses like that growing up – the weird ones, like right next door to the police station, where you had to walk through bedroom 1 to get to bedroom 2, and bedroom 3 was really a mudroom off the back of the kitchen.
Hubby and I swore we’d have a “real house” when we finally bought one. Yeah, we were wrong. Wound up buying one of “those” houses… where the floor plan is screwy, the heat only works in certain rooms, the house started at 300sf, then grew to 700, then to 1100. But it’s ours. And we’re not normal, so why should our house be? Our teenager hates it – I’m hoping one day he’ll love it like we do, like you grew to love yours
It’s like that song, “Love Grows Best in Little Houses.”
The house I grew up in was medium-sized, but with only one bathroom and a tiny kitchen, so it seemed smaller. We were so closed in on by the neighbors — Portland lots are too tiny. I still miss my old room.
Your writing is so good, Ms. Kim.
ps your site looks really good!
This was such a great story. My husband and I along with our son lived in a small townhouse for 15 years and I absolutely loved our little house! But my husband convinced me 3 years ago after our second son came along to move to a bigger house. I was against it and fought it but in the end he won and we moved. I have never liked our house and never felt at home there. I miss my little townhouse and so does my oldest son. It is not what we have but who we have that counts. Don’t you think??
I love reading and seeing all that you and your kids are up to, but it is the posts like this, honoring your dad, that I find myself reading more than once. You write so well, but when you write about your dad/childhood, it seems so very real and heartfelt. I love seeing the house. What a neat story. Your father seemed like an amazing dad. I hope to see more posts about him.
Jennifer
We lived in a slightly larger house with a single in-the-wall heater that was built into the wall between the kitchen and living room. I remember many mornings waking up to ice layers on our bedroom windows (three boys in one bedroom, two in the other – no sisters!!) and seeing my breath as I got out of bed. (The winters get cold here in Iowa) For air conditioning in the summer we’d go walk through the local grocery store for hours on end just to buy a pack of BlackJack gum – when we weren’t swimming in the Cedar River.
My dad also did all the work in the house: kitchen cabinets, living room from floor to ceiling, added on a bedroom on the first floor; we even dug out a drainage field for waste water one summer. I can relate completely to your post.
I know we didn’t have the best house, and I was always doing that “kid” thing of comparing it to my friend’s mansions. (Which, when I go back and look at them now? Really not mansions. At all.)
What really mortified me was my dad’s collection of junky cars. Like the OLD Bronco that had a floorboard so rusted out that I could see the street underneath as we drove along. And the worst? It only had a driver’s seat. I sat on a bucket in the back, and tried to get out in front of the middle school before anyone saw me. Like that worked…
Awww. This was a sweet tribute to your dad’s house. I grew up in a house that embarrassed the hell out of me too. I don’t know if I’ll ever get to a point where I look back on it as unique and a point of pride, though. Good for you, Zoot!
It must be very hard to have to pass on your childhood home. I imagine that lots of people feel a embarrassed about the size of their home, terrible really. I guess I was kind of lucky (?) my parents moved out of the tiny 2 bed stone cottage which had walls 3 feet thick and great window seats, stone flag stones on the kitchen floor, when I was about four into a modern house. As a four year old I remember not liking the new place even though it was spacious and had these huge picture windows. We now had a colour TV, a phone, a modern kitchen and central heating which must have seemed luxurious to my parents generation. Although my Dad was so scared of racking up heating bills we rarely used the central heating lol and some days in winter we would wake u with ice inside the windows. Inside the ice were carvings of flowers and leaves- Jack Frost had visited. the only thing was the house stuck in time and had all the original late 1079′s fixtures and fittings for the next 25 years
Sorry, I meant 1970′s I am not from the medieval ages.