Home

I've lived in many houses in my adulthood. My childhood was spent in one house, the house my parents still live in, 51 years after they purchased it, relatively new. All of my adult houses have been old. Relics. Charming. Having character. Needing repair.

East Lansing held three houses for us Armstrongs. The North Lansing house adjacent to Motor Wheel was an old two-story, with gorgeous dark wood trim and hardwood floors. It had a huge yard complete with big old barn, and I was convinced it was haunted. Odd and inexplicable things happened in that house. (But that's a Halloween tale for another day.) The 24-hour rhythm of sound churning from Motor Wheel (they made car wheels; hey-we lived in Michigan, OK?) was troublesome to ignore at the onset, but eventually we were no longer aware of the regular beat in our background. My Mom likened it to hearing oil and gas wells in the distance when she was a kid on the farm. This house was not in a nice neighborhood, we were once burgled, but there was charm to the house, happiness in walking to the Thai restaurant down a few blocks, and beautiful music emanating from the gospel church just a block from our house. I loved late Sunday morning walks in that direction. (Sorry, but our Lutheran music does not hold a candle to the beautiful gospel music sung by a congregation of African American Baptists. No contest at all.)

Our next house, in our very own "Movin' on Up" episode, was simply what we called The Summer House, because we only had it for 3 months. Terrifically large bedrooms, wonderful sun room windows, a large backyard for two nursery school kids, and that's when we discovered we had Babe #3 on the way. I loved that summer.

We moved on to House #3, in East Lansing. Park Lake Road. Older home, HUGE back yard that backed up to 6 other back yards, with gloriously-mature pine trees. A growing family's mecca, complete with neighbors growing appropriately-aged kids of their own. We threw kids back-and-forth (quite literally) over the fences to each others' yards for playtime. Even in winter, we Moms would congregate out at the fence for coffee. (One day? 11º. It's what Michigander moms do, ya know.) Our finished basement contained laundry, pantry, and a full rollerblade/skate-o'rama area for those long winter months. It was perfect.

Older homes..moving on...pun sort of intended...we Armstrongs moved south to Oklahoma and our alma mater, OSU. Looked at a house on day 1: loved it. But no one in their right mind puts an offer on their first house, right? So we looked at quite a few more houses, and THEN went back and put an offer on the old house on University - the first one we looked at. It was old! Charming! Spacious! Sunroom! Hardwood!

We raised our youngsters here, in a neighborhood full of friendly folk, a good elementary school, cyclable or walkable to the University. This has to be the favorite house we lived in. We had people stopping by our home all the time - kids, parents, strangers, students, whomever. We LOVED it. And we had lots of parties and get-togethers here. Ours was a really casual household, so who knew what they might find when they knocked on our door. But we loved our house, and we loved company.

Fate, economics, good fortune, whatever - all played a part in our most-recent-last move, 9 years ago. When we found that we would be moving to Kansas (K-State) with two teenagers and a pre-teen, of course all sorts of red alerts appeared on our horizon. The one thing all three kids requested? A home out in the country. Huh. OK. It made sense, I guess, in that we had quite a few horses - maybe they were sick and tired of riding their bikes 3 miles every morning and every afternoon for equine feedings. Whatever. That Spouse o' Mine and I felt like it was worth it to find a rural home to keep healthy harmony during this move.

So we found This Old House after much searching. It was certainly not perfect, and is STILL certainly not perfect, but it is home. Circa 1887, original hardwood floors, original dark wood trim, very interesting original basement (unfinished, but my goodness, the craftsmen that dug & built it knew what they were doing - dry as a bone!) The barn is truly a sight to be studied - no nails, only peg-barn construction, with the two widths of the barn joined by hardwood peg through mortise-and-tenon joints. Everyone should look at this art of construction!

The minuses to This Old House? Well, Daughter #2's cat Puzzle seems to think the upstairs is haunted by Cat Ghosts. The windows are not energy-efficient. We have hardwood through-out, and some of the floors are bowed. When we first moved in, I commented to a new neighbor about this, in our house. She quickly replied, "Oh - you get used to that." And she was right.

Such is the charm of an old house. Funny rooms and closets, wood the likes of which you "new home" owners will never ever experience, incredible history (a civil war vet took this land, made a small hut {now, our duck house}, and proceeded to build what is now our home.)

But above all the architecture and history and hardwood and nooks...all of our houses have glorious memories attached to them because it was our family.

"That house was the perfect house, whether you like food or sleep, or storytelling, or singing, or just a mixture of them all. Merely to be there was a cure for weariness, fear, and sadness." JRR Tolkien

I hope that's what all my family & friends think.

~ T.