There are two houses that I call “home”: the lovely Seattle Craftsman that I share with Paul, and the house in the Houston suburbs in which I grew up, in which my parents still live, in which I’m sitting as I type this.
My father designed this flat-roofed modernist house when I was barely a toddler. His father built the house for us, using bricks manufactured in my uncle’s brick yard. My mother’s parents provided the construction loan. We moved into the house on Valentine’s Day, 1964. My father’s valentine to my mother that day – still tucked away in a drawer in the house – was a blueprint of the floor plan, cut into the shape of a heart. My parents have now lived in this house for almost 43 years.
Since I left Houston to live with Paul, first in California and now in Washington, he and I have flown to Houston each year to spend Christmas with my side of our family. We stay with my parents, but I do not have the cliched experience of sleeping with my husband in my childhood bedroom. Instead, we sleep in the room that was once my parents’ bedroom, my parents having remodeled my sister’s and my old bedrooms and bath into a large master suite.
For eleven years, Paul and I have been away from our home for the holidays. Yesterday, for the first time, we talked about staying in Seattle for Christmas. If we are lucky enough to have a child placed with us by next December, we want our first Christmas with him or her to be in our home. Even if we’re still waiting, we want to build our own holiday traditions at home. I don’t imagine that it will be easy for me, waking up on Christmas morning somewhere other than in Texas. But I need to feel that Seattle is home during the holidays, as well as the rest of the year.
To open the advent calendar window for Day 19, click here:
The first home I remember – and the one in which I still have lived the longest – is tucked in among towering oak and pine trees, in a quiet suburb west of Houston. I didn’t recognize this house as anything unusual until I decided to go to architecture school. Until then, it was just our house. Not until I began studying architecture did I see all the thought and care that went into my father’s design of this house.
For Holidailies
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I am off to Cleveland tomorrow- for the first time spending Christmas at my daughter’s place, instead of having Vera and Steve come to me. I’m delighted to be going- to my surprise, it doesn’t feel weird at all..more like the easy, unburdened feeling of a college student going home to help the actual adults celebrate the holiday.
I never would have believed it, being a great one for holidays, home, and traditions of celebrating..but the lessening of responsibility for me is almost euphoric. I felt that way after reluctantly selling my much loved house, too. It was unexpectedly freeing not to deal with the homeowner responsibilities I’d been handling alone since my husband’s death.
All these different times, or stages, or whatever they are turn out to have their own excellent -often unexpected features.
You are going to have such a fine time making your Seattle Christmases your own…and you are obviously going to be very, very good at it.
How exciting to anticipate a new family member! What a wonderful time to make new memories and traditions as well as incorporating the old into the new. Keep us posted! Have a wonderful holiday!
A child placed!??! How exciting! Am thinking good thoughts your way.
You’re right, your Seattle home does have to learn to be home during the holidays, and it will. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from having a child, it’s how adaptable we are, how quickly habits are formed or lost. But also I think, ultimately, home is wherever you are during the holidays.
(Personally, I need some snow with my Christmas though.)
A new child! Time for new traditions! Change is bittersweet, isn’t it?
A child placed? That IS news! I’m glad I’ve been checking in occasionally so that I found out. How wonderful!
I think I spent Christmas of 1998 in my own home. I’m not sure because that was a year of much turmoil. My father had died only ten days earlier. Until 1994, I’d spent every Christmas with my parents. After my mother’s death in the spring of 1995, my father and I would spend Christmas with other family, a brother in LA, my sister in Chicago, etc. If Tiffany and I should have Children, we’re looking forward to spending a Christmas or two in our own home, rather than being nomads.
I’m looking forward to seeing Tiffany tomorrow for the first time in ten days. Our dog Hannah had a ruptured cervical disk, and Tiffany cut short our holiday plans to try to get Hannah stable on steroids. Failing that, and facing Hannah’s increasing pain and loss of mobility, she decided to let Hannah go last Sunday. This has been a very bittersweet Christmas for my lovely young bride.
Best wishes to you and Paul, your folks, sister, and extended family.
William