My Own Little Corner
I want to buy a house.
Specifically, I want to buy the cute '40s brick house that sits a couple hundred feet from my grandparents’ old house, OR, I wanna live in the house we call Sedgefield. In a way, I do own Sedgefield; well, my parents do, at least. It’s the house they bought before I was born, built in 1945 with hardwood floors and one tiny bathroom. We’ve kept it as a rental house since we moved between my second and third birthdays. I have said as long as I can remember that I want to live in Sedgefield again. It’s small and plain, but it has a great backyard, a fireplace, and most importantly, history.
I adore the 1940s. One of my two favorite shows is called “Homefront” and is set in the years following the end of the war. It follows the intertwining lives of several families who struggled to find normalcy and a new life after years of worry and separation. I can imagine the young couple who must have originally inhabited our house facing the same issues and joys. I can picture the fresh faced wife cutting pictures out of magazines and dreaming about what colors to paint her spacious (by their standards) 1,200 square foot home. I can picture myself, too, mixing new and old décor, watering a flowerpot on the front porch, and excitedly throwing the door open to friends and family. There is just something about an older home that relaxes me. Perhaps it’s ridiculous, feeling that residing in a house built in a beloved era will somehow shape my life closer to the idealized images that live in my head. In Sedgefield, though, a connection is there, not only to the distant past, but also to my own.
I lived in the house less than 3 years, but the impact it’s had on my life far exceeds the time actually spent in residence. When I was little we’d go over to fix up the house between renters, and I would visit with the neighbors who’d lived in the charming homes since they were built at the end of WWII. Time spent in conversation with kindhearted Charlotteans born more than a half century before me taught me respect, admiration, and love for men and women of previous generations. I played with a girl who lived across the street in a run-down, overcrowded house where someone always seemed to be yelling. Watching her showed me the existence of, and inspired compassion for people who didn’t have the same sort of stable, loving, comfortable home life I enjoyed.
Afternoons and late nights spent painting, cleaning, and fixing up the house with my parents gave me not only a slew of practical skills to prepare me for home ownership, but warm memories of Amy Grant tapes echoing through the empty house, laughter over old stories retold, and pizza and coke dinners with only the floor for a table. Forever in my mind will exposed light bulbs and barren houses bring happy feelings of a closeness brought to my family by hard work and deep love. Though the upkeep of a 60 year old house makes the potential real estate profit seem overrated, the time spent together is priceless. I love that house. Yeah, I wanna live in Sedgefield. Somehow it will always be home.
Specifically, I want to buy the cute '40s brick house that sits a couple hundred feet from my grandparents’ old house, OR, I wanna live in the house we call Sedgefield. In a way, I do own Sedgefield; well, my parents do, at least. It’s the house they bought before I was born, built in 1945 with hardwood floors and one tiny bathroom. We’ve kept it as a rental house since we moved between my second and third birthdays. I have said as long as I can remember that I want to live in Sedgefield again. It’s small and plain, but it has a great backyard, a fireplace, and most importantly, history.
I adore the 1940s. One of my two favorite shows is called “Homefront” and is set in the years following the end of the war. It follows the intertwining lives of several families who struggled to find normalcy and a new life after years of worry and separation. I can imagine the young couple who must have originally inhabited our house facing the same issues and joys. I can picture the fresh faced wife cutting pictures out of magazines and dreaming about what colors to paint her spacious (by their standards) 1,200 square foot home. I can picture myself, too, mixing new and old décor, watering a flowerpot on the front porch, and excitedly throwing the door open to friends and family. There is just something about an older home that relaxes me. Perhaps it’s ridiculous, feeling that residing in a house built in a beloved era will somehow shape my life closer to the idealized images that live in my head. In Sedgefield, though, a connection is there, not only to the distant past, but also to my own.
I lived in the house less than 3 years, but the impact it’s had on my life far exceeds the time actually spent in residence. When I was little we’d go over to fix up the house between renters, and I would visit with the neighbors who’d lived in the charming homes since they were built at the end of WWII. Time spent in conversation with kindhearted Charlotteans born more than a half century before me taught me respect, admiration, and love for men and women of previous generations. I played with a girl who lived across the street in a run-down, overcrowded house where someone always seemed to be yelling. Watching her showed me the existence of, and inspired compassion for people who didn’t have the same sort of stable, loving, comfortable home life I enjoyed.
Afternoons and late nights spent painting, cleaning, and fixing up the house with my parents gave me not only a slew of practical skills to prepare me for home ownership, but warm memories of Amy Grant tapes echoing through the empty house, laughter over old stories retold, and pizza and coke dinners with only the floor for a table. Forever in my mind will exposed light bulbs and barren houses bring happy feelings of a closeness brought to my family by hard work and deep love. Though the upkeep of a 60 year old house makes the potential real estate profit seem overrated, the time spent together is priceless. I love that house. Yeah, I wanna live in Sedgefield. Somehow it will always be home.
posted by Tiffany at 11:10 PM
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