Our first apartment was a second-floor, west-facing, 1940's house in Altus, OK. The whole west side of the house was windows. We lived there in the summer of 1980...average temperature outside 115, average temp inside, 100. We put foil over the windows, shiny side out, to try and reflect some of the sun. An air-conditioner, three fans and a water mister ran all night in our bedroom. The kitchen was in the hall. Open the oven or the frig and no one passed through. The bathroom was broken for the first week of our lease and we had to go to Carl's parent's house to shower.
Our first apartment at the seminary my husband decided to attend at the very last minute was the one no one else wanted. It had been built probably in the the 20's. One bedroom, lineoleum floors that would not come clean, holes in the wall in the kitchen from the previous tenant's dart board. (I considered maintaining the dart tradition with a picture of my husband, but decided that was petulant and I wanted to be the martyred party in the relationship.) The bathroom was so grim I don't even remember it. Ancient screw-open windows lined the entire front of the apartment, but they neither cooled the apartment in the summer or kept in the winter heat. We were thrilled at the end of that first year when the school built new apartments and we were allowed to live in one...except, the new carpet had some kind of toxic allergen and we were sick for weeks. I have never sneezed so much in my life. The dog we got to protect us from the homeless guys that slept on our back porch ate the corners off the kitchen cabinets and the doorbell rang every Saturday morning at 7 am so the Jehovah's Witness could attempt to save the lost Presbyterian souls.
We lived in a couple of church manses (church owned homes for those of you not familiar with weird church words). I will not pontificate about those, wishing to protect the innocent. We bought our first house in Houston. We took down fabric from the walls and scrubbed the paneling with Brillo pads to remove the nicotine. When we moved in, you could see the outline of the gun collection on the wall in the family room. We nested there with chimney birds. Yep, the only house we ever owned with a fireplace was in Houston, TX. Nice place to raise birds, not so nice for a fire. Somehow it just didn't seem right to run the air-conditioner so we could watch flames flicker.
When we moved to Nebraska, we discovered wonderful things about our house -- things that were so good, the previous owners didn’t tell us. For example, we had a potential ice skating rink in the living room. A thin layer of water on that floor (which we discovered was uninsulated) and we could have hosted Olympic skating--or made a bit of spare change for college tuition. We knew the basement was plumbed for a bathroom, but we did not know there was already a shower -- coming conveniently from the plumbing in the main floor bath. We never had to rake the yard. When you opened the front door and the basement door at the same time, the house sucked in all the leaves. Voila! It was also the perfect house for raising teens. The ancient coal-heating vents made every word in every room float through the house into our bedroom. We could hear everything they said and whatever they did with their friends. They never caught on.
The idiosyncrasies of houses make them "homes." Only glossy magazine “houses” are perfect. Homes are places where you repair the screen on the back door torn off two years before when the dog was a puppy. Then, when you open the door to bring the adult dog in, he jumps through the new screen because--he always has. Homes are where you have so many bikes you cannot park your car in the garage. Homes are where the dog barks viciously at your ninety year old neighbor bringing cookies, but sleeps through the “intruder” at two am who brings a phone message. Home is spilled orange juice on the floor you just mopped. Home is Barbies with wet, cold hair from baths the night before in your six am shower. Home is all your husband’s shoes lined up just “outside” the closet door. Home is throwing all the junk into the basement to "clean" the house for company, then having to go to the basement with them for a tornado warning.
I was listening to the radio segment talking about the stress of the holidays because everyone expects perfection. I gave up on that years ago. If you want perfection, buy a magazine. If you live in the real world like we do, come on over. The Utley’s are home.
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