Grandma's House.....is there a better image-provoker than that phrase? A Google image search brought up 204,000 images of Grandma's House in just .04 seconds. I remember an antique dealer telling me that he made his living by selling people memories of Grandma's House. And he was right! After all, wasn't he just collecting $200.00 from me for a set of McCoy nesting bowls that were exactly like the ones Grandma had in her house?
We are once again taking up the search for a house. In nearly 39 years of marriage this will be our 14th move and the 6th house we will buy. But it is so different this time. For the first time this house will not be a stepping stone to another phase in our lives. This house most likely is the Last House. This will be the growing old house, the end of the road house, the retirement house. It won't be house that will grow children, tolerate teenagers or become oddly silent when the kids move out.
This house won't be a fixer-upper, do-it-yourselfer, stretch the budget house. It won't be a house where the re-sale value is always in the back of any changes or improvements.This house will be for slowing down, scaling back and being smaller. This house won't have mountain bikes, work-out equipment, craft projects, workplace wardrobes and yard machines. This house will be more about how soothing are the views from the bedroom window rather than how many toys can we pile into the garage.
.jpg)
SeniorLand is a different ambience than Suburbia. I wish so many people didn't walk around wearing scowls and wanting to be hall monitors. I wish there more children. I'm glad there are not teenagers with too much car, too much allowance and too much time. I wish I weren't reminded several times a day that this is the winding down time of life, not the making future plans phase.
Every house we've looked at here has a sad story. SeniorLand is the place of sad stories. You come in as a couple and end up as a surviving spouse. All the houses we've looked at are on the market because someone got too frail to keep up a house even here. They move in with children, closer to children or into the senior living apartments. I'm impressed with the bravery of seniors who gamely transition to the next (declining) step of life with the spirits undampened.
So I bring different expectations about what this next house will be--and what it won't be. It will be a Grandma's House because now I'm the Grandma. I won't be as interested in the kitchen as I will be in room for wide-screen TVs, computers and gardens. I hope it's a place where someday a grandchild will smile at remembering his own Grandma's House. And that's not a sad story at all!
No comments:
Post a Comment