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BPAL Madness!
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My grandparents' farm.

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filigree_shadow

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My mom is an elementary school teacher, and she's getting ready to retire at the end of this school year. Last year she bought her parents' farmhouse after my grandma died. She has many siblings, and although the land was divided up between them they weren't sure what to do about the house and buildings. A couple of my first cousins were interested in it, but they couldn't afford it. So, since my dad passed away a year and a half ago and my mom would like to live closer to her siblings (who are all in the same general area except one), she bought it.

 

Her original plan was to tear down the old chicken coop and the old barn that Grandpa built (they really needed to come down, and they're already gone now), and then tear down the old farmhouse and build a new house on the same site. When it was time to really make decisions about the house, though, she started thinking of all kinds of reasons why she didn't want to tear it down.

 

A couple of months ago she finally decided to stop talking about building a new house and just fix up the old one. By the time she's done, it probably will be more expensive than just building a new house. But it wouldn't be that house. The house she grew up in. She was the first child in the family who was born in the hospital instead of at home, so she wasn't technically born there, but her older sisters were. Grandma died in that house, too.

 

In the 1950s Grandpa added on a new kitchen and bathroom (before then they only had an outhouse) plus an extra upstairs bedroom. He built it himself, with timber he had cut down out back. He also built all the cabinetry in the kitchen and bathroom. Grandpa was a farmer, not a carpenter, but he built it. The wallpaper Grandma had hung in the 1950s was still there. There was some flooring in the upstairs that dated to the 1920s. That house had not changed one iota since before I was born, with the exception of new furniture in the living room and new carpet in the downstairs. That's it. My mom couldn't stand to think of tearing it down.

 

I'm glad she's fixing up the old house. I can't imagine that house not being there. Throughout my childhood we lived in four different houses, and my parents lived in several different places since I left home, but Grandma and Grandpa always lived in the same spot. The house my other grandparents lived in has already been torn down -- the people who bought it only wanted the riverfront property and wanted to put up a whole new house. So my only real "home" link any more is to that farm.

 

My grandparents moved into that house the day they got married in 1938 and never moved from it. Grandpa bought it from someone in his family -- his mother grew up on that same farm (different house at that time, but the same farm). That little plot of land there at the bend in the road with a creek running behind it and the best well water you've ever tasted in your life has been in my family since about 1850. The big red barn has my family's surname and the year 1891 etched into one of the doors. It was never a big farm -- only a few hundred acres -- and it was nothing fancy, but it was clean and well-kept.

 

My three sisters have no interest in living in the middle of nowhere on midwestern farmland, but I love that little 20 acres that is now my mom's. So my sisters and I kind of have an agreement that whenever that land gets passed on, it'll be mine to retire to. I told my mother than I have no problem putting a clause in my own will specifying that the land will be sold only to a descendant of my grandparents no matter what other offers may be. My ancestors have lived on that land for so long, it feels like it belongs to us -- even without the deed.

 

So many things in life change so fast... but some things need to stay the same.

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I feel similarly about my grandparents' old house. It had history, our family's history, even though they didn't build it or anything. I dream about it consistently, and far more often than I dream of the only other house I had close association with, the house I essentially grew up in.

 

When they died, the only thing I was heartbroken about was the house. They had been "gone" for a few years already, having Alzheimer's and various strokes, so there was no loss there, just a feeling of relief for them. But the house.... well, I wasn't in a place to be able to afford it, let alone move there and fix it up, so it had to be sold. And truthfully, I am glad that the folks that bought it are fixing it up. Last time I was in the area, I made my husband drive by it, just to see, and it looks wonderful with a new coat of paint and the trim all fixed up. I wanted to knock on the door and ask if I could look around, but I felt odd.

 

Still, there is part of me that will... oh, "mourn" sounds so silly in regards to a house, but I do mourn it, or rather, I mourn that I can no longer go there and enjoy the house. Even the hideous wall mural that my grandfather insisted on putting in the living room.

 

It's odd, but I just realized that I seem to connect far more strongly with places than with people. The friendships I've lost, I am sad about, but this house, that I never actually lived in, brings tears to my eyes. I wonder if that says something about me.

 

I agree with your last sentence completely. Even if I had gotten the house and redecorated it, it still would have stayed "the same" to me. Perhaps that's what I mourn.

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It's good to have someplace that stays the same. Otherwise you just kind of feel like a wanderer. And the fabric and feeling of an old house that has much history is like a well worn pair of shoes--they fit your feet in all the right places. And frankly, older homes are often more well built than their newer counterparts--they have a logic about them that newer places can't even measure up to.

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  Kitrona said:

I dream about it consistently, and far more often than I dream of the only other house I had close association with, the house I essentially grew up in.

 

I dreamed about my grandparents' house a lot when it was unclear what would happen to it right after Grandma died. For a while it seemed like one of my cousins would buy it, and I was totally against that. He is, shall we say, not the tidiest of farmers. There are farms that look nice and clean and lovely, and then there are those ones that have a barn that hasn't been painted in 20 years and has half the roof caved in, and there's all sorts of junk and tractor parts sitting around in the yard. If my grandparents' farm had turned into a mess, I would have been LIVID.

 

Whenever I think too much about the house I mostly grew up in and how I'll never live there again and the people who live there now have changed everything in the house, I get teary-eyed. Actually I think that's pretty natural, but I think people don't talk about it much. It seems like I more often hear people say something like "I never want to see that house again" after they lived somewhere during a bad time in their lives. It makes me feel really thankful to have had so many powerfully good memories associated with a place I lived.

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  Ah Xia said:

It's good to have someplace that stays the same. Otherwise you just kind of feel like a wanderer. And the fabric and feeling of an old house that has much history is like a well worn pair of shoes--they fit your feet in all the right places. And frankly, older homes are often more well built than their newer counterparts--they have a logic about them that newer places can't even measure up to.

 

I completely agree with everything you said there, and I think you said it beautifully. :)

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I think is a wonderful idea that your Mom chose to repair the house than build a new one, with all the rich history and fond memories there I know she won't regret that (even if it does cost more).

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