Eulogy for a Home

This is the house I grew up in:

I took this picture soon after Bruce and I got married. 
That's his awesome 1969 Cougar in front of the house.

My parents bought this house in 1966—about a year before I was born. (I've sometimes wondered if I came along as part of celebrating a new, bigger home ;-) )

The right wing and the big front porch were built by my dad when I was little.  There used to be a carport on the right, and the porch used to look like this:

That's my little sister, Denise, taking a big step up.

My dad transformed the carport into two new rooms—the dining room (an extension of the kitchen) and the den—or library, if you like.  I remember trying to walk along the new floor beams—like a balance beam—while Dad was outside building the rooms. For some reason he was singing, "Here comes the bride, all fat and wide . . ."  (Probably I brought up the whole wedding idea that day; I thought his song was funny, but not very nice.)  I remember him working on a Saturday, fighting to piece and put the stone onto the fireplace he'd built; the same fireplace where I gashed my knee open on the hearth and got the very biggest scar I've ever gotten, to this day. (That prompted Mom to keep the hearth covered with a quilt or sleeping bag.)  I remember watching TV in the living room while Dad and Mom hung the smoked mirrors on the walls on either side of the fireplace (very 70's, very trendy).

A surprise birthday party for me.  I'm sitting on the fireplace hearth and you can see the smoked mirrors to my left.

Dad added on the big front porch a year or two after the rest of the addition (long before the above picture was taken). He and Mom and I went up into the canyon at 5:00 on a Saturday morning to get some of the stone that Dad would later put on the walls surrounding the porch (I guess that was OK back then).  The big, flourescent porch light showed Bruce the way to pick me up for our very first date.


We called our porch light "the sun."

I remember when Dad poured the cement for more parking space on the side of the house.  We kept ducks back then, and they got out at night and left duckie footprints in his beautifully-smoothed work.  He was pretty mad, but I thought it was cute.

I played with my very best friend in that house.  I met and dated Bruce while I lived there; I lived in that house for all of my unmarried life.

This morning that house caught on fire.

My mom wanted to make breakfast-in-bed for my dad this morning, because he hasn't been feeling well.  After she finished cooking the breakfast she thought she'd turned off the stove, but actually she turned on the back burner where a pan with oil in it was sitting.  She gave Dad his breakfast, then went back to the kitchen to get her own breakfast and the fire was already everywhere.  It was a two-alarm fire.
Thank goodness they got out of the house safely!

Bruce, me, and Melanie
That's the dining room and den behind me.
(I captured this photo off of the streaming news video—FOX 13)

One of their neighbors, up the street . . . their daughter is a good friend of Lindsey's . . . we got a phone call from them.  Bruce and I got there just after fire had been put out; we talked to Mom and Dad—they were safe.  My brother, Peter, who lives with them, had been in the basement; Mom thought he was sleeping when the fire started.  Apparently he called 911 on his cell phone and let the fire-fighters know exactly where he was; he was finally able to break a window and they helped get him out.  He's being treated for smoke inhalation and a cut on his hand; he should be fine. So, thankfully, thankfully, thankfully the family is all right.

This is the window Peter escaped from; it is diagonally opposite the room he was in when he called 911.  He must have remembered that this room had a bigger window (all the other basement windows are only about 14-inches high by 2-feet wide).
Thank goodness he was able to make his way to it in time!

This fire-hydrant is actually on our property.  When I was little it was my horse, my car, or just a perch where I could view the world (an uncomfortable perch).  When I was older it was a little worrisome when backing out of the driveway.  So glad it was right there when it was needed!

These are some of the bravest and kindest people I've ever met.

You hear about fires on the news, even get to hear the 911 calls.  You might think, "Oh, how sad!"
But now I know the reality of it: That was my brother terrified for his life on the call (linked above).  My dad has Alzheimer's; he and my mom went to stay with my sister, Melanie.  Dad keeps asking why he's there in his pajamas, and every time they tell him the house caught fire he cries as if hearing it for the first time. (They've decided to "remind him" that they are staying with Melanie while the house gets remodeled.)

And this is my house:

All my family, and my cousins' family on the front porch —July 1976



the front porch



This is me on my bouncy-horse, in the living room.

Christmas morning in the living room (before the remodel)

the living room
You can see the fireplace; the "smoked" mirrors really did get smoked before they all broke.

the west end of the house—the addition my dad built

the dining room (from the back yard) and the deck that my brother, Paul, and my dad built—where we had summer parties

My brother, Gregory, just inside the side door (dining room).

the pot that started it all

the spice cupboard on the wall, just to the right of the stove
Considering its location, it survived amazingly well.

If the bathroom doors were open, I'd run around and around the house.  When I had the measles I ran from my bedroom (in the front of the house), through the other bedroom, through the bathroom and into the kitchen to throw away my popsicle wrapper; I was so excited to be let out of my room for even that long!

This is where my parents slept. It was my bedroom, growing up. You can still see the butterfly wall-paper that I chose.  This room is the farthest from where the fire started, but the mini blinds were totally melted from the heat.

It's the house I grew up in.  I played there with my seven brothers and sisters and my cousins, lived there with my wonderful parents and my grandma from Brasil.  I loved and admired the beautiful figurines my mom had collected—many of them she bought while she and my dad lived in Germany. I played with the wooden elephant—with real ivory tusks—that my mom brought from Brasil.  I had friends over to play there; I got the doll-house that my dad built for me there.  I practiced the piano there.  I was always so proud of the great work my dad had done on our house—"My dad made the biggest and most beautiful house in the neighborhood."  We celebrated birthdays, holidays and weddings there. My sweetheart courted me there; it's the house I moved from when I got married.  At one point or another almost all of my married siblings came back and lived there with their children for a while.  Bruce and I lived there while my parents served a mission; Jason was born while we lived there.  A lifetime of books, photos, collections, mementos, home . . . all gone.

But my friend Jessi is right:  Everyone is OK; houses can be replaced.  I am so, so grateful that the family is all right.

And now we move on.