A few days ago, I went by my parents to visit and coincidentally my mother had uncovered a box of old photos. Since several photos were literal snapshots into my family over the years, I took a few of them to my therapy appointment to show Gary. I reminded him that my father and his family are all from Edgecombe County in North Carolina on a road that bears their last name since everyone living on it was from our family. He looked at the portrait of my mother from 1967 and said, “where is your mother from?”

Me: “Oh, she’s from Ocean View.”
Gary: “No, but where is her family from?”
Me: “Well, she was born in Raleigh I think, but they all moved to Ocean View when she was really little.”
Gary: “No, before that. She looks a little Mediterranean.”
Me: “Oh! I have no idea. I’m not good at genealogy. She’s from where we live now.”

My father was born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina and lived on the same farm his whole childhood, one with its own family graveyard. Recently, though, he and Mom talked about picking a plot out over on Granby Street, just a few miles from where we are now.

As for me, there is definitely a very small radius of real estate that I call home. I’m irrationally dedicated to this neighborhood. I had been living across the state in Christiansburg, married and with a full-time job, when we drove back to Norfolk for a visit. I had the window down as we came out of the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel and when the salt air hit me I suddenly realized that I was home. I wish I could bottle up that smell to share with you.

On the day I told Jeremy our marriage was over, I handed back my wedding rings and drove home. I stayed in a rental property of my parents, sleeping on a futon mattress on the floor, but I was back in the neighborhood where I rode my bike as a kid. I spent a lot of time walking up and down the beach then (since I was only a block from it) and came to realize how much I needed to be near the water.

Soon after that, I moved to another rental property that I eventually bought from my parents. Rich and I had many discussions while he was living many miles away in Richmond as to who would move for us to share an address, but I think we both knew that the further I was from Ocean View, the harder it would be on me. I come by this irrational behavior naturally. When Rich and I talked about moving to the next neighborhood over (a whopping four miles away), my mother lamented “I don’t know why you have to go so far.” So of course when Rich and I shopped for a larger home than our original house together, I would lament that certain houses we saw while walking the dog were “too far.”

Rich: “You realize we got here on foot from our current house?”
Me: “Yeah, but it’s too far. I can’t walk to the water or my parents’ house from here.”

That said, I consider any space I share with Rich to be Home, wherever it is. He was gone all day yesterday and I spent most of my day either doing laundry or moping about the house waiting for him to come home. Where do I feel safe and content? Wherever Rich is.

But where am I from? I’m from a part of the coast that is cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter than other cities inland. I’m from a shoreline protected by the Chesapeake Bay, so the water is perfect for learning to swim in the summer. I’m from a neighborhood where live oaks twist into shapes like giant bonsai trees and create so much shade that they make “clean swept yards” of sand and tiny acorns. I live just far enough away from the water to not have to buy flood insurance but to still put sheets of plywood over our windows when a hurricane comes.

Our local grocery store is equally frequented by poor families and yuppies, and there are nearly as many rainbow flags as American flags on front porches. This area was the place to be in the 40s and 50s, a place to avoid in the 80s, and is slowly turning back into the place to be again now. But some of us have been here all along.

We’ve learned to swim in these waters, learned to rollerskate on these sidewalks, frequented every single 7-Eleven available to us, practiced driving a stick shift on the dead end roads near the inlets and struggled to peddle our bikes up the hills of the Bay streets. And with a baby on the way, I look forward to creating another “OV lifer.” I still can’t quite bear to get one of those “OV before it was cool” bumper stickers, though.

Thursday morning Rich flushed the toilet upstairs and the kitchen sink downstairs filled with water. I spent the morning bailing out the sink while he finished his shower. And then I sent an email to my father.

Over Thursday and Friday my father and I spent a fair amount of time under the house. The plumbing issues involved moving the clean out from under the house through the foundation, using Daddy’s auger to investigate the clog and cutting out a five foot section of iron pipe. But those details aren’t very important.

The important parts of this adventure were all the little moments with my father. Daddy has a pretty intense paranoia streak so that when we met a significant resistance in the clean out line, he was convinced that our contractors from eight months ago had sabotaged our plumbing. He went down a list of every worker on that he’d ever had a conflict with, and that’s not a short list.

We marveled at the strength of plumbers “back in the day” who could heft length of iron pipe around under houses. I waited while my father straightened pipe edges with the circular saw over and over and over until I worried there wouldn’t be much pipe left. I learned that when my sense of smell is this keen, it’s not the greatest to spend two days around raw sewage, burning PVC and iron and plumbing cement. And we spent a lot of time “shucking corn.”

My father tells a story about a farmer that hired a farm hand to shuck corn. He told him to throw the rotten ears in one pile to be ground up and the ones that were still okay but not edible for people into a pile for the hogs. When the farmer came back at lunch, the farm hand had barely made two pitiful piles of corn. The farmer shook his head and decided to at least let the poor kid finish out the day but told him just to shuck all the ears into one pile. The farmer came back at the end of the day and the farm hand had made a mountain of corn! When he asked the farm hand why he had done so little that morning and so much that afternoon, the farm hand shrugged and said “all those decisions were slowing me down.”

In any project our family undertakes we spend a lot of time deciding just exactly what we’re going to do and then a smaller chunk of time painstakingly following through with those decisions. I spent a fair amount of time this week just observing and marveling at how my father and I work together.

My father and I never had a father-daughter dance at my wedding. We don’t go out for fancy dinners to celebrate special occasions. But when he’s lying in a ditch trying to find the plumbing cement I can tell him “Back. Over. Down.” and he’ll put his hand right on it.

These are the days our memories are made of.

Since it has been 70 DEGREES THIS WEEKEND I wanted to work on some random projects around the house. Earlier this week, I had bought a bunch of tiles from Flor.com to become our new dining room rug and they thankfully arrived on Friday! Wooo, crazy Friday night at our house!

Sarah is a 12-year-old elderly stateshound and when sick or under stress has let us know by exploding in some portion of the dining room. Always the dining room. What can I say, she’s a creature of habit. I have actually watched her start to get sick (usually from eating grass outside) and just before she pukes in the kitchen on its convenient tile, she will sprint on her creaky little legs to the dining room to puke on the rug in there. Ugh.

I have an elaborate system for cleaning the carpet but it’s time-consuming and a bit neurotic. It keeps the carpet in good shape, but it takes a good hour each time it happens. When you have company showing up 45 minutes after you’ve discovered an accident or you’re already late for work, this can prove inconvenient.

We started using pee pads in her favorite spots on the old rug and those were working great except that our dining room didn’t have much decor what with the green and white diaper mats strewn everywhere. So I bit the bullet and bought a new rug.

This isn’t just any rug, though. It’s from Flor.com. They sell individual tiles that are 19.7″ square (it’s a metric thing) so you can mix and match. They all have rubber backings on them and they clean up amazingly well. I first read about them on Dooce.com when Heather raved on how she got wine off her carpet with a baby wipe – a baby wipe, people! I was instantly hooked. But they’re not cheap and I was chicken to pick out a set for a long time. Until now.

I ordered 49 tiles for the dining room, not really sure how many of them I would use and how many would become spares. With some tinkering, we worked out 35 of them in a 5×7 pattern and have stored the remaining 14 to be replacement tiles should anyone decide to pee or puke in the dining room (not naming any names or anything). I can’t tell you how pleased I am with these tiles! They went down super easy, the pattern was fun to make, they’re designed for heavy traffic and if we decide to put them somewhere else, they stack and fit in the back seat of a car. Try that with a Persian rug!

I’m now shopping for tiles for my craft room, which is a funky shape with two doors in it and lends itself well to tiles of carpet. Soon I will have no excuse to not be sewing all the time!

Along those lines, we finally cleaned all the crap out of the spare bedroom upstairs. I still had Christmas wrapping paper and accessories up there (and lots of them) so it was time to tidy. Those went to storage in the utility room, the piles of recycling made it to the actual recycling can and after six months of living here, I finally took all my fabric out of the trash bags we moved them in and into tubs on shelves. I have a lot of fabric and I really should work my way through these piles before I buy any more. The whole room, though, looks a thousand times bigger! Hooray finally moving in!

Other than that, I haven’t accomplished much. I’m headed outside to enjoy the sunshine a bit more before it’s back to work for another week. Here’s hoping this weather holds out or at least comes back to stay soon!

I’ve been using a dead man’s dish soap for the last six months.

Some people may be uncomfortable knowing someone died in their house. I actually know the exact day that Barry died in this house last March and can only assume he died in his bedroom, which is now our den. We had already looked at the house to buy it when Barry thought he was going to recover from his cancer but didn’t need such a large home. And his sister-in-law Anne was the real estate agent who worked with us again after it was Barry’s estate that was selling the house. We’re the first family other than Barry and his parents to ever live in this home. When his brother Kevin (the executor of the estate and Anne’s husband) handed over the keys to us at the signing, the key ring had their family crest on it.

Because they wanted to sell the property so fast (I assume to help pay off his medical bills), it was only about 30 days from when we first agreed to buy the house to when we were closing on it and signing papers. Barry had lived in the house for many years and had accumulated a lot of stuff. Even with his fastidious nature, there were lots of things to donate or sell or remove. We ended up buying a home that had a lot more “extras” to it than anything brand new.

There’s a beautiful mahogany-framed mirror Anne said I could keep. We got an extra push mower out of the deal. I have a new butter dish from Barry and several glass corn on the cob plates (which I didn’t even know they made but can’t wait to use this summer). Barry collected matches (as any chain smoker might do) and we have the giant plastic tub of them to prove it. We got a large fire safe that works much better than the tiny one we owned. And the number of yard tools in the garage would rival our local hardware store!

All of these things please me. They remind me of Barry, a man I actually never met other than through a few old photos I found in the attic. They remind me of his parents and how they built this home for themselves and their six children. They make me think that in some ways we’re keeping Barry’s memory around this house.

When we had our Nosy Neighbor Open House, we invited Anne and Kevin back to see what we’d changed. As they walked around the house, Anne started to cry. She smiled and said that when they were dating they used to sit on the side porch and listen to the radio and she’s so glad we kept the side porch in all our renovations. I told her that’s why I wanted her and Kevin to come back. I wanted him to see that the room Kevin waited for Santa in was still there and one day someone else might wait for Santa in it. I wanted him to see that all we did was make some updates and a few changes but we kept their home intact and would take good care of it.

Barry never got a chance to see what we did with this house after he was gone. But I think of him often as I wander around the house and we talk about him as if he’s part of our extended family.

“Where did these books come from? Oh, right, they’re Barry’s.”
“I’m going to use Barry’s mower to edge the yard.”
“I think Barry left us a spare valve for the furnace’s gas line, I just have to find it.”
“Let’s give Barry’s grill to the neighbors. It’s a lot nicer than theirs and we don’t need it.”

I just used up the last of Barry’s dish soap last week and while it wasn’t my favorite brand, I was a little sad to see it go. The greatest thing you can hope for after you’re gone is that people will remember you. We never met, Barry, but I remember you and your family fondly.

Dear tenants in our old house,

Today is move-in day for your new home and let me be the first to say welcome! I know you were hoping to move into another house with a more modern kitchen, but that house sold, so you’re managing with our house. The appliances are older here, but it’s still very nice. Since it’s your first night here, I wanted to give you a few hints about the place.

The upstairs will always be warmer than the downstairs. That’s just the way it is with single zone heat in a two story house. You’ll get used to it. I suggest putting computers downstairs, though. Also, the air return is in the living room and it’s really loud but it’s the only place it could go without a lot of work to move it to the hall. Again, you’ll get used to it. Just keep the remote handy when you’re watching TV in there.

All the keys for the house (front and back doors, door knobs and dead bolts) are keyed with the same key. My father did that for me before I moved into the house back in 2002. It’s incredibly handy to not have more keys than a janitor on your key chain. The front porch lights are on a timer that’s incredibly complicated to set. Honestly, I’ve never set it myself but just let my father mess with it when he was house-sitting. Maybe he’ll house-sit for you too and fix your timer as the seasons change. Take note that you have to have at least one non-fluorescent light bulb in the lights to power the timer. I’m still not sure why that’s the case, but I just accepted it. Daddy could explain it to you, but it wouldn’t be a short explanation.

We repainted the upstairs bathroom for you so it’s no longer Pepto pink with flower basket borders around the top. Trust me, it was just as horrible as it sounds. You’re welcome. Daddy even threw in a new vent cover for the AC vent. For that matter, we painted the entire house except for the closets to give you a fresh start. We also replaced all the carpet in the house and most of the tile. The carpet is significantly nicer than anything we ever had living there, so please try to keep it nice. I can recommend a good shampoo unit for your dog’s inevitable accidents. Our dogs had plenty of their own there (hence your new carpet).

We’ve already run DirecTV and cable lines all through the house. Please don’t let the installation punks staple coax cable to the outside of the house; it’s ghetto and unnecessary. We also replaced the roof and pressure washed the entire outside of the house so it has that new house smell inside and out. I called and changed over the insurance from vacant property to rental property and you’ve signed the lease. You’ve got keys to the place and when I drove by this evening I could see you prepping for your move. The rental agency assures us everything is squared away.

The neighbors are nice enough and tend to keep to themselves. The old lady next door frets if your dog barks too much, so try not to stress her out. And the sheriff on the other side lets his dogs wander into the front yard to poop. It’s very annoying; feel free to fuss at him about that.

I’m nervous about renting to you. It’s not you really – it’s me. I’m nervous about someone else living in my house … OUR house. That house was a rental property of my parents’ before I moved there and there were some disastrous mishaps there (one day I’ll tell you the long story of the ice maker ruining the floor and my father scarring his arms to bleach the floor boards under the house). I rented that house from my parents and then bought the house from them. It was my safe haven after the divorce. It was the home where my neurotic dog Sarah blossomed into the fantastic elder stateshound that she is today. It’s where my aloof cat Isis learned to snuggle. Eventually I convinced Rich to move here from Richmond and it’s where Rich and I got our first live Christmas tree together (and kept it up until February). It’s where we had one absolutely epic fight by the front door at 1am and where years later we spent our wedding night. We’ve had sex in every room of that house (you’re glad for the new paint and carpet, aren’t you?).

My parents have counseled me on house buying over the years. They own over a dozen rental properties in the area, so they’ve gotten pretty good at buying houses. But in their entire lives my parents have never sold a house. So I’m not very good at letting go of a home and letting someone else take it over. If the mortgage were a little less (and the insurance not so much) I could have been tempted to leave it vacant.

Try to remember that this isn’t just a random investment property of ours. It’s not a house someone in New York bought to flip before the bottom fell out of the market. It’s not someone’s eventual retirement home that you’re just squatting in for a few years. It’s our first home. We’re willing to share it with you for awhile, but please be good to it. Seeing that house get trashed might break my heart. But seeing you take care of it and enjoy it could really do me some good.

Oh, and don’t eat the apples off the tree in the front yard. They’re a novelty the first year, but you’ll grow to hate them. We just keep the tree up for the doves that nest in it each year. Consider them sub-letters.

I hope you like it here in Ocean View.

Welcome to the neighborhood,
Genie