The saga of the little white house
When I was born, in 1950, my family lived in a very nice house that was, what they called in Michigan, a 'Dutch colonial'. It had a kitchen with a breakfast nook, a formal dining room, a large living room with a fireplace, a sunroom, three bedrooms and bath upstairs and downstairs a basement with a big, scary furnace and a coal bin.But when I was about eight, my father decided to build his own house and we moved into the bottom half of a rented house while my father worked on the new house. There was a carriage house at the back and myrtle just like at my greatgrandmother's house.
Eventually, the new house was ready. It was all brand-new in a modern style and I had my own bedroom. It was out on the western edge of town and there were all sorts of places a tomboy could have a treehouse, go for a walk or ride her bike.
But, for some reason, after a few years, my father decided to move back into the town. He bought a small white, two-bedroom bungalow. There was a lot of work to be done - steaming wallpaper, remodeling the kitchen, stripping the paint from the woodwork, removing years' worth of rubbish from the basement. Finally, it was ready. I must have been about thirteen.
It is in that white house that most of my family memories are held: the sound of card playing in the dining room when I was drifting off to sleep, making and decorating Christmas cookies with my mother, going out and getting the Christmas tree each year with my dad, eating the fish and game that my father brought home from field and stream, the amazing array of tools in the garage, sitting on the front porch on summer evenings, putting the extension in the dining room table for family meals like Thanksgiving.
And there I lived with my parents for a number of years. I was nineteen when I made the first of my many trips to Europe and it was to that white house that I always returned. In the attic and the back bedroom were stored all my treasures: Beatles pictures, hippy clothes, souvenirs, furniture and household goods.
I loved that little white house and I understood from my mother that it would be left to me.
My mother died in 1991 while I was in Australia. (Sadly, she never knew I was accepted into University.)
My father died in 1999 while I was there in Michigan looking after him. I returned to Australia and my stuff from the house was put in storage. (Well, most of it was.)
The family decided to have everything valued so that when items were apportioned to each of the children it would be fair to all. At that time, I had three sisters and one brother. I returned to Michigan in July 2001 to organise shipping what was in storage back to Australia. A lot of my things were gone.
My brother was one of two executors on the estate (my sister, JU, was the other). Acting on his own and without my sister's signature on the contract, he sold the little white house to my father's housekeeper who had known my dad for approximately five months. He didn't want to wait while I organised finance - he had taken my father's 50 acre piece of land and wanted to use it to get access to a block of land behind it to build a subdivision. He wanted the money and he wanted it without delay. Too bad if my memories were there.
Along with the memories and lots of stuff from the house and attic I've also lost out on lots of other things. When I was tiny, I used to go grocery shopping with my mother and the store we went to was called the A. & P. In the cupboard of the little white house was a tin of A&P's 'Ann Page' brand cinnamon. I'm sure the spice was useless but how dearly would have liked to have had that little tin of spice! My brother took my mother's high school yearbook which I had always kept (stupid me, he asked that everything like that belonging to the family be gathered together at his house - I should have known I'd never see it again). He and his wife took my mother's collection of recipes - including a little book of recipes for children that my mother gave to me. They've got all the family Christmas ornaments, too. Oh, one of the things left to me was my mother's gun but somehow when I returned to pack up my things to send to Australia the gun never materialised. And they had kept at their house a beautiful carved and painted wooden duck decoy of mine and that never materialised either.
Since my father died, my three sisters have all passed away. My brother is the only one left. And it was my brother who made sure I'd never be able to live again in the little white house.
posted by Susan @ 7:25 pm
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