I've been seeing ghosts around our house lately.
Usually, they show up late in the day, after night has settled into the neighborhood. When shadows hide in the corners of a room, or fill the basement before I turn on the lights. When most people are in bed, or gone off to work the late shift. I see them when I go out into the back yard or garage, but mostly when I'm reading a book in my favorite chair or sitting alone, listening to the sounds a house makes when it groans and shifts its weight.
They are mostly friendly ghosts -- children, teenagers, friends and even long-gone pets -- who have lived in or visited our house over the past thirty-three years. They act like I'm not even there and I don't know if they can make any noise, but I do hear them in my head.
You see they do speak to me in their own way. The way photos in my parents' photo albums speak to me when flipping through the pages.
They are integral parts of a story that began in 1992 when Liz and I bought our first home in La Crosse. It wasn't the first house we'd bought since getting married, but it represented a change of pace for our young family with a young son and another baby due in two weeks.
We were desperate to find a house that would provide shelter for a few years, before finding a better job and a better house. It was a step back from our previous home in Michigan, but we saw potential in the small, post-war 2-story house. How bad could it be?
Thirty three years later, we are moving out. As the Grateful Dead sang after a drug raid on their hotel room, "What a long, strange trip it's been."
Never in a million years did we think we would be staying in La Crosse, me working in insurance and Liz returning to where she'd earned her bachelor's degree in nursing. Like the joke goes, a German man gets pulled over for speeding in France... the officer asks “occupation?” and the man replies “no just visiting,”
I thought I was between marketing jobs, and after a few years, I would be looking for another job in a new city. My job in Michigan had ended badly, and I was waiting out a glut of midwest marketing job applicants before finding my way back. But like many things in our lives, I was wrong.
The addition of another child, familiarity with the schools, neighborhood and family made moving out of town harder than we thought. In a blink of an eye -- or quicker than the zombies in "World War Z" -- our kids were going to Longfellow Middle School and Central High School then away to college. In between was baseball, tennis and skiing, not to mention boy scouts, show choir and concert band.
Like everyone, the kids' first days of school are forever etched in our memories. One advantage we had was living close to all three schools, so we could walk the few blocks to Harry Spence Elementary with the boys to and from school. Later, it was classmates who would stop at the house on their way to middle school or high school.
Our neighbors were the best-- from day one, when Gladys from next door, gave us her spare key when we discovered we were locked out of the house on our first day. Without her help and subsequent conversations over the fence, our appreciation of our neighborhood would have been so much different. Years later, when I found her lying on her driveway -- the result of suffering a stroke -- I was struck by how much she meant to me and my family.
The neighbors around us -- all old and retired -- enjoyed having a young family in the neighborhood. And they always had time to give us advice on owning a house. Advice learned through years of raising their own families and by owning their own houses.
Little by little we put our stamp on the house, making it our own. Liz's parents were instrumental by helping fund a new kitchen, and a finished basement. I tore down the old fence and started from scratch building my own. We couldn't afford a vinyl fence, so I built it out of hundreds of wood pickets that needed to be painted every few years. After a storm knocked over four trees -- hitting the fence, house and garage, it was time to paint again.
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Another major improvement we made was adding a pergola in the back. I'm still proud of the work done on that project, since most of it was spent on ladders nine feet above ground planning its dimensions and then building it. It's one of a kind, built to match the shape of a concrete patio and the growing flower beds beneath the structure.
Speaking of flowers, multiple changes to the beds in our backyard and front became one of the house's most appreciated features -- neighbors and others walking past always had something nice to say. I will dearly miss those flowers, many with us from year one.
When selling the house, we told the buyers that there wasn't anything in the house we hadn't remodeled or painted, except the porch, which still managed to get a new coat of paint and carpet. Our final project was tearing down the old garage and building a new 2 1/2 car garage, According to Liz it should have been done the day we moved in. I'm kind of proud that I managed to work my way around that project for more than thirty years. Unfortunately, by the time we did build the new one, it cost seven times the amount it would have back in 1991.
When it comes to owning a house, I guess you win some and lose some. With the house on 22nd Street, we clearly won more than we lost. It is a better home today than the one we moved into all those years ago.
And so are we.
The ghosts are coming on a regular basis now -- our neighbor, Gladys when I look out the kitchen window, holding a gladiolus that we would later plant by the fence. Conney, our ornery divorced neighbor was standing at the end of our driveway, waiting to give me hell for not shoveling the snow properly. Our first schnauzer, Snickers, can be heard barking in the back yard, scaring the hell out of little kids walking home from school. I swear I can smell pine in the living room, where family would sit around the Christmas tree opening presents.
Fortunately, there are no memories of Matt tumbling down the basement stairs or rushing to the hospital because we found him in the garage holding a bottle of Mt Dew I had filled with anti-freeze. The closest we came to disaster was when Sean found a knife that cut his finger to the bone. Contrary to what Liz thinks, I do learn from my mistakes.
The house is nearly empty of its furniture, with the exception of items too big for us to move. A moving company will be here ion a few days to move everything else out to the new house. There seems to be a correlation between items leaving the house and memories moving in. For every piece of our house that is packed up or moved out, I am reminded of when we bought it, or who used it most.
More ghosts --
If I didn't know better, I'd think Matt was playing DOOM on the computer in his old bedroom (he shouldn't be playing because he's too young). I find it hard to believe that room -- a very small bedroom -- once held a double bunk bed used by the boys. Another bedroom upstairs is where we received an early phone call that Liz's dad had suffered a stroke. It was a scramble to wake the boys and drive down to Monroe. The other guest bedroom is where Sean and Matt stay now when they visit. I wonder if the room talks to them like it does to me. I still remember sleeping in there to give Liz last night with Bailey in our bed before taking her to the vet one last time. And, standing at the top of the basement stairs, I can hear cub scouts laughing down there doing who-knows-what. I just hope it doesn't involve something dug up in the back yard.
It's strange sitting in our kitchen, as our sons and friends sit down to join us for one of Liz's excellent meals. More than any other room in the house, the kitchen always has someone floating around waiting for scalloped potatoes and ham, cream chicken and puff pastries, mac and cheese, lots of hamburger helper and crock pot roast beef. I can't forget the Krumkake, rosettes or hundreds of Christmas cookies. Every house should be haunted by Christmases past. I know our kitchen is.
My family will have to wait a few more years for my famous lasagna. Many of the ghosts don't believe it will ever be made. Maybe the time is right.
Even though I didn't turn it on, the television abovet the fireplace is showing an episode (the Long Night) of Game of Thrones where the living meet the Army of the Dead outside Winterfell. Doug and Peggy have come over to celebrate the episode with wildfire cocktails. That TV somehow knows to show only the best shows from the last 30 years -- Seinfeld, Cheers and Frasier, Malcom In The Middle, How I Met Your Mother, and Friends. Tomorrow night there will be the final season of "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" starting at 6 o'clock. It was on the television in the basement that we gathered to watch the Packers beat the Bears, then go on to win the Super Bowl. Much to my joy, the Bears still suck.
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