Mama’s dream, when I was young and single living in San Francisco, was to purchase a two-story house that had been divided into two flats. “You can live upstairs,” said Mama.
Whenever she mentioned her dream, I responded with reality, “It’s too expensive.” That didn’t ever make her dream any less. Back then, the thought of living with Mama again, even in a separate apartment in the City, was not what I wanted.
So, ha! on me. Fast forward to the summer of 2003, I find myself living with Mama again. Not in the city but back in my hometown of Hollister, which was transitioning from predominantly farmland to a sea of residences. We can thank the Husband for agreeing to move away from the San Francisco Bay Area where he had lived most of his life. By the time we moved, I had lived longer up there.
Not any more. This year marks our 20th year living in Hollister. I doubt we’re going anywhere. We’ve paid off the mortgage so we’re sitting pretty in that way. The Husband wanted to get far, far away from the city, and I tell you this is pretty far, especially if you rely on public transportation. Fortunately that’s not our current situation.
This house that we live in was Mama’s. She bought it by herself when she was 66 years old, retired, and widowed. She sold the house that she and Daddy bought when I was 10 years old to buy the newly built two-story house in 1987. So, there you go, Mama got her two-story house and the other part of her dream came true when the Husband and I moved in with her and took over the second floor with its two bedrooms and one bathroom.
In a way we were like two households. The Husband and I were self-employed writers and editors so we spent most of our day upstairs in the bedroom turned office, while Mama hung out downstairs and in her garden. We came together for lunch and dinner to make sure that Mama got her nutrition, which was one of the reasons why we moved here. But that is a story for another day.
This house, Mama’s house, now our house, is 36 years old. Mama moved in on Thanksgiving weekend. I had no idea Mama had bought this house until that weekend when the first Husband and I dropped by for a visit on the way to somewhere else. We pulled up to Mama’s old house to find movers loading up her furniture into a truck. I wonder when she would’ve told me she had a new house if we hadn’t stopped by.
She didn't tell you she was moving? How strange. But it sounds like it's been a good house for you for the last 20 years.
ReplyDeleteThat was one of her quirks, I suppose. She also didn’t think it was necessary until years later to tell me that she and her coworkers were taken to the emergency room because they got food poisoning from eating a bad tuna.
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