Selling Out

When Sheri saw the “For Sale” sign in our front yard as we pulled into the driveway on Saturday afternoon, it choked her up. We’ve been working so hard to get ready for this, but preparation doesn’t dismiss the emotions when they come. I took a video of our house – this inanimate object, this material possession – when it was painted and staged and as clean as it has ever been, and I was surprised to have to fight back tears as I narrated the ways we used each room over the past twenty years.

The office that used to feature the crib that protected all four of our children. The bedroom next to ours that once had a loft and bunk beds to keep any nighttime tears or coughs within our earshot. The stark white kitchen, remodelled and painted to conform to our selling agent’s orders, that used to have red walls and wood cabinets and the kind of constant activity you dream of when you consider getting married and having a family. The dining room table is gone, but the chair scuffs on the hardwood floor confirm that we ate together most nights, when sports and concerts and meetings allowed.

We dug out the sandbox and covered it with grass when the kids outgrew it, but the tree with the swinging ropes and climbing ladder remains for the next family. We grilled countless pounds of meat in that backyard, throwing darts, playing Cornhole, and a game called Pickle. We took down the Aspens as they died slowly, one by one. We used ropes and a sawzall and said a little prayer that we’d miss the power line when we called, “Timber!”

We live in a city neighborhood but had vivid encounters with wildlife just the same. I was chastising Sheri for wasteful neglect because I heard a spoiled milk gallon bouncing around in the back of our SUV, when suddenly the milk gallon stood up and revealed itself to be a raccoon who was as distraught by the moving vehicle and his proximity to us as we were by ours to him. One weekend afternoon I was enjoying the peacefulness of our front porch when a coyote bounded down the middle of our street toward the relative protection of the golf course a couple of blocks away. I grinned knowing we couldn’t afford to be members of that country club. And there’s the sick fox that tried to die in the passenger seat of my Jeep tucked safely in our garage, only to be ushered away by my two oldest armed with brooms, and to later die in the side yard of our neighbor. I’ll never forget the woodpecker that returned several springs in a row to peck at the sheet-metal cover on our chimney at sunrise. I angrily threw rocks at him in my underwear, then had to pick all the rocks out of the yard. When I wised up and aimed the garden hose at him, he admitted defeat and moved on to torment another sleeping family.

Gone now is the basement family room carpet onto which our third child projectile vomited Superman-blue cupcake frosting, and from which I recently ate what I thought was Papa John’s pizza sausage only to learn I was mistaken (full story here). That carpet witnessed a lot of Disney movies and Mighty Machines “documentaries” and countless replays of Mickey’s Christmas and Alphabots during the holidays.

Our house has two fireplaces that we were afraid to use when the kids were little, and never got around to using when they outgrew our fear. We chose this house for the potential to “pop the top” for our growing family, but instead, we just crammed ourselves into our little craftsman bungalow. I felt regret and shame each year that went by and the “timing wasn’t right” for the construction project. Now I’m happy we didn’t turn our charming little home into something it wasn’t meant to be.

Our bedroom has extra coats of paint.

When I got sober and we eventually stopped arguing through sleepless nights, Sheri painted it and changed wall hangings to give us a fresh start. There are layers of paint that will permanently hold our darkest memories of addiction and trauma. But there are also layers that will forever represent renewal and survival. Our agent made us cover them all with white, but we will never forget – neither the good nor the desperately bad.

When we spent all of our time trying to survive my self-inflicted wounds, we missed making memories that nourish the soul. But we are the lucky ones. For us, my addiction was a chapter, and not the whole volume of our lives.

I moved around a lot as a kid. Sheri moved some, too. So the idea that we raised our family almost entirely in this one house is harder for us to conceptualize than I expected it to be. How can a pile of 110-year-old bricks mean so much to me? I’d like to say what you probably expect me to say – that it’s the people and the memories and not really the house at all. But that misses something. After twenty years, this house feels like a part of my family – like the protector and the joy-maker and the secret-keeper. This house was strong when we were not. This house was ready when we were desperate. We formed a symbiotic relationship of mutual protection and caretaking with our little bungalow.

We will soon be gone, but the memories – the laughter and tears, the notes from piano and guitars, the smells of sauteed garlic and onions, the quiet and the screaming – will live in these walls and my heart forever.

If you are ready to move on to your next chapter, please consider joining us in SHOUT Sobriety.

SHOUT Sobriety