The ancient lockbox always sat under the old slant-top schoolmaster's desk. The desk was a Christmas gift from Mom to Dad. She was a teacher when they met, and a couple years after he became a teacher too, she gave it to him, the desk lovingly stripped and refinished by her patient hands.
I've spent so much time in that lockbox over the past 20 months, going through their papers - SO many papers! Pictures from their childhoods, family birth and death certificates, taxes, scribbled genealogy notes, pension papers, pay stubs from the 60s, homeowners' insurance, car insurance, investments, taxes, wills, medical stuff, assorted licenses - and the deed to a house I've never lived in, but have lived with, for over 40 years.
That house became mine when Mom passed in March 2023, and it's now been three weeks since I finalized the sale of what was called, on the 1981 survey, "The Drummond Estate."
Built in 1824, it was a little farmhouse with an outbuilding or two, and perennial gardens which, if memory serves, were a huge selling point. Mom and Dad had always admired the flowers on their daily trips to and from the schools where they taught.
Over the years, the gardens changed; bulbs gave up after many years of bloom; raised beds replaced ground-level ones; herbs replaced flowers; flowering trees and shrubs, roses, more perennials, and more bulbs were planted, expanding the garden from its original spot in the east lawn to vantage points from windows in almost every room.
Over the years, the house expanded from its original footprint, just as the garden had, as family members' lives and needs changed. With none of us in a position to take it over, for a variety of reasons, I've sold it to someone who will bring it up to date, allowing a family to move in and enjoy the gifts the Estate has to offer.
For a long time, even before Mom passed last year, it's been hard for me to see and feel the memories I had of the house. There are many reasons for that, including me putting up a protective shield to purposefully keep them out, and later to keep them from getting in the way of handling the estate (the lower-case 'e' is intentional), and spare me the pain of her loss, and Dad's 18 years ago next month.
But as I walked the buyer and his team through the house, those memories started to sneak back in:
- staying in the tiny room at the top of the steep and narrow original stairs, as I described where the original house ended and additions began;
- the dogs having to be collected from the old house and driven back home (more than once, the silly pups) as I walked him around the yard;
- standing in the dining room, remembering running my fingers over the indentations in the old dining room table, where Dad marked papers for years with a heavy hand;
- looking out where Dad's little pumpkin patch (a fun field trip for Mom's elementary school kids) used to be; before that, the asparagus patch, and at some point, the Christmas trees, only a couple of which were ever harvested;
- the half-removed sidewalk leading to where the chickens made their home in one of the long-since-gone outbuildings that appeared on the survey;
- the surprise 50th-anniversary shade garden My Sweet Baboo and I planted where they'd see it every morning at breakfast;
- the hours spent in the living room, packing little bags of herbs and spices for the booth at the Jordan Fall Festival, and singing 'Oh-ree-gano' to the tune of Handel's 'Hallelujah', leaving us giggling the rest of the night; and more.
