2512 Houser Road...

The following is an email (posted with permission ;) and only ever so slightly edited...) from my undisputably amazing brother (i have two of those - this is from the youngest)- and, though I considered conveying its news in my own words here, have thought better of it. He expressed it so well, that I can't mess with it and certainly can't capture the feeling of being there as he does. Though it's close to impossible to picture it as 'nothing,' I felt like I was walking with him, laughing and crying simultaneously. Since reading it, I haven't been able to shake the feeling that something significant in/from my life is gone - a part of our story that I would have loved to show my kids (I took McKenzie when she was two...) - to take this same walk with them. But, as he said so well, it's the people that mattered. matter. the people write the story, make the memories and share the same sense of place...a sense of place that remains even if the place itself no longer does.

Family,

I felt compelled to write this, I do not know why.

About a week ago I got a message from Whitfield Bailey. It said, 'Did you know your old house is gone? all but the barn'. I did not, but i do now. It's gone baby, gone.

I was in knox this weekend and between trips to Webb, Petro's, Pops house, Long's and Dr. Showalters office (not much different than 1997ish, eh?) I drove out Riverbend (and did not get nauseus, mom) and was nostalgic before i hit Duncan's Boatdock. Every road i passed was a vivid memory of a friend or an event. it was beautiful. It has been further McMansion'ed (Kirbo, i guess not everyone can have a cannonball in their bedroom wall) but it is still beautiful and is definitely still the neighborhood we grew up in. (Sorry, Rotherwood).

Upon passing the Bolt's and the Nacy's(sp?) (and encountering no Snickers-eating dogs w/ saucy old women for owners, Buck, nor did i embark upon a 13-yr-old lil jackrabbit on the wrong side of the road around a blind curve, brother). The barn was intact and as the BR-R-R-R-R of the cattleguard alerted me that i was home (usually, after a comatose-inducing spaghetti dinner at Pero's, or Naples, or The Quarterback) i saw nothing but a hundred feet of pea-gravel driveway and a well. nothing else. no poolhouse, not to mention pool. no greenhouse, nor tennis court. no back deck off mom and dad's room. no apple tree next to the front door. no swing on the non-existent apple tree. no house. i cried. i am about to cry right now.

I walked around in the mud (ruining a pair of shoes, which, as my loved ones, you know, is a big deal for me) and walked in the front door and looked right to the pool room and thought i'd love to beat Andy Eastman in some Horseball...and maybe accidentally break yet another window in there. that chandelier always got in the way of me beating buck at pool.

I took a left and walked through the BLUE ROOM, and laughed at memories of christmas past, touched the original Apple MacIntosh Dad got us for Christmas of 198?. That computer fathered the computer upon which I type now. thanks for gettin us ahead of the curve pop. that green screen hurt my eyes though. I skipped the porch with the ping-pong and wicker furniture and all the liquor that Darin and Marie enjoyed. Bucky and JJ wouldn't let Andy and Justin and Drago Knight get into it but kirb and i weren't so virtuous, Buck. I skipped the laundry room because, well, i got no memories of the laundry room (THANKS MOM!!!!), except for Alyson Bustamante breaking up with me down there and i damn-sure didn't wanna relive that lil pubescent hell.

I took a look thru the lil swingin doors into bucks room but there was a lot of Soccer, Rod Stewart and Kristy George in there and i wanted none of that. Though i almost snuck out Buck's door to avoid the tears streaming down my face but i was worried pop might bust a cap on me upon re-entry....much like buck shot me with the bb gun off that porch (no doubt, it was revenge for the ol' 'brick to the head b/c you threw me off your inch-worm' manuever i pulled 10 years earlier).

The quiet room was not quiet as Kasey Kasem's Top 40 barrelled through Kirby's eternally slammed shut door. i think i went in there like twice. once to shoot or get shot with a BB off the mirror. great move by someone. and another time b/c mom (afraid to enter, i believe) asked me to tell Kirby dinner was ready....i think i got the bird from a permed, benetton model in there. Kirby was the coolest. period. i always wanted to be as cool and social and non-chalant as the teenage Kirby and as aloof and brooding and intimidating (at least to me) as the pre-teenage Bucky.

So there was nothing going on in my messy, pee on the rim, holes in the Confederate flag-adorned wall (irony, much?) or in mom and dads rooms (yes plural, roomS, that bathroom was bigger than my apartment and that backporch would've been used a lot more if any of us were the learners we are now....but there was too much fun to have. we lived in a dream, i'll be damned if ima be readin on a porch when i could be drivin the DINGO though the Paddocks!

I jogged down the brick hallway and hopped the 3 HUGE stairs to the kitchen (great room as Dad calls it) with the well, which is all that still stands, framed in glass to my left. Dad was sitting in the first bar chair, feet in the second, reading, reading. always reading or working....at the office or the Ponderosa (i learned later that somebody had to provide for all this....thank you Dad.) Pop read like Mom slept!...as long and as often as possible!!!! I think we were having chicken and pasta and french bread, i thought not once about how good it was nor did i thank mom, but i will now: thank you mom, for everything unnoticed and unappreciated. except for being dragged to CS Hudgens and Michael McNealy's and other places that sucked....oh, but you made up for it with a trip to the Bagel-dog place where we watched the SpaceShuttle Columbia explode, or Buddy's.

As i stood in the middle of the kitchen, red couch and wood-burning stove to my left, mom and dad to my right and my whole life in front of me, i dropped to my knees and wept. I realized that the house was gone. forever. i realized then, that the home remained. You 4 were everything and the bricks and mortar and acreage and 'things' were very little. The house i grew up in no longer exists and i am sad. But the reason i am sad, that there was so much life lived and love in that home, make me rise, look upward, Thank God for each of you. I love you. Nick

Meanwhile, in Narnia...

I love...and hate, at the very same time, that my sweet Carterman burst into tears at the white witch's 'triumph'...I watched their faces as much as I could as we approached the end of the chapter and wasn't quite sure if he was following or understood what was about to happen. oh, did he. why did she DO that?!...why would they do that?! at which point I'm crying, too...both for Aslan and for what God is doing in my sweet boy's heart.

Today

The morning after our fun in the snow, John Thomas ran to the back door to check on "Snowy" and found this....

eyes, mouth, nose and buttons gone, hat fallen and head drooping, Snowy wasn't in good shape - and we're hoping that John Thomas isn't traumatized. Michael, who is typically pretty good at recovering these things, told him that Snowy was praying. This didn't help. at all.

McKenzie has since declared today as 'the best day ever.' Something you should know and may have guessed, especially if you know her, is that each day trumps its predecessor as the 'best day.' example - today trumps yesterday trumps snow trumps spelling bee trumps disney. you get the picture. Today was awesome and I happen to agree with her....for now. After a crazy busy week and a half or so, we spent the day playing games, watchin' a little Saturday mornin' cartoons (they're really not all that anymore...what happened to tom & jerry?...), visiting Narnia, drawing & coloring, doin' some puzzles, cooking, playing star wars (because no day would be complete without Obi-wan and Vader) - with a little laundry and home maintenace thrown in (our front porch, in case you're interested, is 'settling' - and, therefore, in need of caulking and such. I'm not a big fan of settling as, apparently, our back porch/patio had done the same when Ike rolled through town...and, wow, we found out all about the reprecusions of settling when left to itself....sooooo, yeah, we - and by we, I mean Michael - got that all taken care of in anticipation of the next hurricane....) - all with windows and door open to enjoy the amazingly unseasonably warmish, fraudulent weather. It was a good good, much needed day. and we're all WELL...knock on wood. Hope you, too, had a good Saturday!...

Was it worth it?

the 10 minutes o' fun in the snow? we asked this of each other, though we could barely HEAR each other over the wails that literally had me believing someone was suffering from frostbite and i was a horrible mother for taking my kids to play in the snow...for a moment.

seriously, though. they were wailing. First McKenzie, which we ignored (hush, Grannie) initially. It became increasingly difficult to ignore and then there was the possibility that the neighbors would hear the wailing....which is apparently contagious, so John Thomas decides to throw himself into the snow and do the same. Carter is still oblivious and keeps helping Michael and I with the finishing touches of our snowman (whose name, this year, is, appropriately enough, "snowy"...this is after having refreshed everyone's memory on the awesome names of previous snowmen and encouraging them to 'think of somehting creative!'...i got 'snowy'). Carter, who figured he was missing out on something, then decides to join in...though he and John Thomas briefly forgot their misery to admire 'snowy.' we surrendered and headed in only to realize that their little boots were filled with snow and so in 20ish degree temps, their little feet really were, most likely, pretty cold. but, still. I'm thinking that laying in the snow making multiple snow angels almost immediately was not a good idea. lesson learned. so, back to the original question. after upwards of an hour of rifling through clothes in the basement to find "ski bibs" (which McKenzie, literal first born that she is, took issue with, as we were not skiing and she is too old for a bib....wow)..."snow suits," bundling the 5 of us and the wailing....the looks of wonder and excitement on their faces, the snow angels, the snowballs, the chasing, the laughing, the sledding, the consumption of the snow (all felt the need to taste it...and it did, in fact, taste just like it did last year, as confirmed by Carter), the snowman....

not quite sure about the thumbless mittens...
and they're off.....
the aforementioned snow angels....
7ish inches!

having recovered - consumed hot chocolate and cookies, taken a warm bath and perched in front o' the fire, McKenzie declared it the "best day ever!" so, yeah, i'd say it was worth it. do I want to do it again tomorrow? not so much.

"God complex"

I write down the funny things these babies o' ours say on sticky notes that are all over the place - the idea being that someday I'll get organized (ha!) and write or type them all out in chronological order for all of us to enjoy in years to come when we can't remember the details of these days....this one, i thought, was worth sharing...

me, as i'm walking by: "whatcha doin' buddy?"
John Thomas, without hesitation: "playing God"

(yes, it's still out...along with the Christmas tree, fully decorated)

insight from a 5 year old...

Carter, while playing monopoly:

"it's not alllll about money"

you're on to somethin' there, buddy.