I am sitting at my upstairs den desk which looks out a window. The view from here is nice. I can see the blue sky, the trees leafing out, and the dogwood right outside the window in full bloom.
I put this here when I moved to give my heart a little reminder of my mornings at my little Decatur house. Every morning I had a routine.
Get up, let the dog out, feed the pup, make my tea, start some boiled eggs, and go sit in my office.
My office was a central room in the back of the house, and pretty much the entire exterior wall was windows. My yard was huge, and at this time of year the Azalais that my dad bought for me years and years ago would be blooming their heads off.
I had 21 Oak trees in my yard, mostly in the back. In the spring, as the leaves were coming in it would be a mess. (tree sperm ick!) but the end of that was a gorgeous canopy of old growth trees that blocked out everything ugly that was around me.
I miss that view. I miss my home. The only real home I ever had in my heart. I miss my life, my work, my body, my self control.
Where did it all go? How could I have neglected to appreciate it all when it was mine?
Technology, the kind that did no even exist when I first bought my home in 2003, now allows us to not only take a quick photo on the fly, but to be able to look back on them in an instant. The ease of this sometimes is too much for me because I still get very melancholy when I see my home.
When I sold it to Ted Waters in January of 2021, as heartbroken as I was to see it go, I was also glad that HE was the one to get it. Ted was not someone that I knew well, or really at all, but my old neighbor, Luke Simpson, knew him well, and evidently Ted had been over there at a party once and wandered over to my side of the fence. This had to be the party of all parties that I threw at Christmas in 2009. half of Decatur showed up. It was principally at my house, but Luke had made a gate between our houses and he had "Lukies Bar" in the separate garage out behind his house, so people were going back and forth. I cant think of any other time that he would have been over there. In any case, when I sold it, and we were in the parking lot after closing, I finally got to meet him. It was deep Covid 19 time so the closing papers were signed by me on the front porch of the law office, while he and his agent were inside.
As I sat in my car bawling and thinking "what have I done?" he came out over to the car window and said |that house will always be yours, and you can come visit any time you like". It made my heart feel good that he got it because he said he loved it just the way it was. He had no plans to change anything.
3 years later, on the morning of the Georgia State Women's Pinball Championships, I got a text from my old neighbor asking me to call her. I was literally just starting to play and asked if it was important. She said its about Ted.
I knew it couldn't be good, but I also had a little hope that maybe in some crazy world he was talking about selling it back to me. I know...a really crazy thought. I was not at all prepared to hear what she was about to say when I called her back a few minutes later.
January was terribly cold and temperatures that morning were so low that ice was all over anything that had the least bit of moisture on it. I think it had dipped to 17 degrees overnight, and wasn't much warmer even after the sun came up.
Evidently Ted had been on the front stoop, which didn't have a railing, and fallen off it sometime the night before. He had severely broken his leg. A compound fracture that had actually broken the skin. I know this because they said when they found him outside his car, they saw a trail of blood from where he had fallen, to where he had drug himself to his car, and the handprint on the door indicated that he had tried to get inside. Maybe to honk the horn? We will never know because he froze to death.
It was so shocking to hear this news. Not just that he had died, but frozen while laying in MY front yard. Horrible. I thought about how happy he had been that morning when I last saw him. He really did love that house.
Part of why I had never been back was because I thought, like most do when they move in to a new place , he would have changed things to his liking and I couldn't bear to see that. I woke up this morning thinking about my home. I knew that nit had been put up for sale again and had resisted looking at it on line. I didn't want to see the changes he had surely made. I just now looked. it has indeed been sold, and for 72K more than I got for it. That upset me in general, but then I saw the pictures.
Shitty pictures taken with a cell phone of the empty house. It was hard to look at them, but he told the truth. He didn't change a thing. It was my old house with all the same colors Id finally gotten to paint in 2018. I started to cry with that ache of longing in my heart you get when you miss something or someone so much that its physically painful. Then I saw the back yard pictures. Whoever took over the property, assuming one of his kids, had clear cut EVERYTHING down. All the Hydrangeas... god those were BEAUTIFUL in the summer, one of which was given to me by Andy and Jason as a house warming gift when I moved in...gone...and the Azalais that my dad bought for me...gone... everything is just gone.
I sat here and just cried. I don't know if I thought that somehow Id end up back there one day, or that somehow I could just miraculously will myself back in time to make the RIGHT decision NOT to sell it, but that feeling of longing has now been replaced by just a sad empty hole.
I certainly don't have the money to buy a house now, and its worth so much more than it was 3 years ago I wouldn't have been able to buy it back regardless.
Someone new will occupy it soon, either that or a builder is going to go in and redo it entirely then sell it for 300K or more. Then it really wont ever be mine again. Not even in spirit.
When I sat down here this morning to write and listen to my Zen playlist just like I used to do....looking out that back window, a cup of tea steaming in the chilly morning air, and Gabby sitting in her bed in the green chair next to my desk...I didn't think Id be writing about this. I was going to write about the changes going on in my world of Pinball and life in general, but the view and the music sent my mid back to that place I loved so much, so I did the thing I said I wouldn't do. I looked.
I guess looking back is not always a good idea, especially when you are unhappy in your current state. I want so much to be able to move forward with my life. I feel like I've spent so much time looking back at things that I am stuck. I don't know HOW to move forward, and I keep making huge, life changing mistakes.
The thing is, I felt this way at Longshore too, and I know it. I can look back and miss it, but I had the same issues there, well, some, that I do here. I spent years regretting buying that house when I first got there, and back then I would dream about the 2 years I spent in the tiny carriage house that I also loved and missed, thinking that buying that house was a huge mistake. Clearly it wasn't, and I can se that now.
I have a new view in the morning. Ill never have that old one again, and I need to learn to look back in appreciation, not sadness. I need to embrace this one because its all I've got, and while it is different, its still pretty nice.
What I do not want is to be sitting in yet another new view 20 years from now...(god Ill be 73 years old, about the age Ted was when he bought that house from me) writing about how much I regret losing THIS house. Either from having to sell it because I can't afford it, or because I'm too old and my body is too fucked up to be able to keep it up the way it should be kept. I have to make changes. Big ones, or that's exactly what is going to happen.
God, or whatever may be out there listening, please let me do it. PLEASE help me to pull it together and find a direction. I'm so tired of looking back in sadness and regret. I want memories that make me happy and proud.
I have to till a NEW garden, so my view will always be good and the flowers will always be blooming and so when I look at it I know that no one can take it away from me ever again.
help.
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