One of my favorite rooms in my
childhood home was the cypress-paneled den. It was a small space, with a huge
wall of bookshelves and built-in storage on one side and display shelves and
more storage on the other. It was tucked into a shady corner of the house and
the thick rattan shades didn’t make it any lighter. But it was a cozy place to
curl up in the winter or on a rainy day.
I was entranced by the
souvenirs, gifts and knick-knacks that crowded closer and closer together on
the glass display shelves over the years – a mechanical bear toy that drank
Coca-Cola, a plate depicting the Follies Bergere, jewel-toned ashtrays and
intricate barware. More than that, being an avid reader from a young age, I spent
many an afternoon literally climbing the bookshelves in search of something new
and interesting to devour.
One day, when I was about 10,
I came across a poetry anthology and read the first verse of this poem,
entitled “Home”:
It
takes a heap o’ livin’ in a house t’ make it home,
A heap
o’ sun an’ shadder, an’ ye sometimes have t’ roam
Afore
ye really ’preciate the things ye lef’ behind,
An’
hunger fer ’em somehow, with ’em allus on yer mind.
It
don’t make any differunce how rich ye get t’ be,
How
much yer chairs an’ tables cost, how great yer luxury;
It
ain’t home t’ ye, though it be the palace of a king,
Until
somehow yer soul is sort o’ wrapped round everything.
What caught my eye originally was that the poem was written
in dialect and was difficult to make out. I had no way of knowing at the time
that the author, Edgar Albert Guest, was born in England and moved to the
United States as a child, penning the poem in 1916 when he was 35. (The dialect
appeared to be from Michigan, where Guest grew up, and, when I lived there
briefly as a young adult, I was surprised to sometimes hear the same vernacular
as the poem.)
For a 10-year-old who had always lived in the same house,
the poem was puzzling, and not just because of the language. I read it many
times over my childhood, sometimes even reciting it aloud. In my heavy south
Georgia accent at the time, I’m sure it was completely unintelligible.
My conclusion was that the poet was saying you had to live
somewhere a long time to make it your home, which made sense to my 10-year-old
self.
More than 50 years later, I have a slightly different
interpretation. It isn’t just how many years you spend in a house but also what
you do there and with whom.
That concept is especially poignant for me because, as Rosh
Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, approaches, my husband Marc and I are beginning
the process of making a home out of a new house – or, at least, a new-to-us
house.
We lived in our previous brick Georgian-style house for
nearly 20 years. When we moved there at the beginning of 1998, the house had
rotting carpet, peach vertical mini-blinds, a treacherous wooden deck and a
plethora of bizarre molding and other carpentry added by the do-it-yourselfer
former owner. By the time we left it, in July, the house had undergone a
complete renovation.
While we began work on that house before we transported a
single piece of furniture, we later had some unexpected help with the
demolition. Just a few months after we fully moved in, the house was hit by a
tornado. Thanks to our dogs at the time, Jack and Hanni, who cried out when the
careening barometric pressure hurt their ears, I awakened to recognize the
severity of the storm, turned on a radio and heard the tornado warning for
Dunwoody. After cajoling Marc to join us in the basement, we safely road out
the storm, which created an impressive hole in the side of our house over our
bed. The damage estimate was more than $60,000.
We knew we were going to need a new roof but certainly didn’t
expect to get it that way. I’ll never forget the screeching noise as the
tornado literally pulled the nails out of the shingles.
All in all, we fared better than some of our neighbors, and
our house had been repaired by Rosh Hashana, where we entertained guests for
lunch the first day. By my estimation, that was the first of more than 100 times
we had a full table for holiday meals at the house on Tillingham Court and that
doesn’t count the number of times – greater or equal -- we had friends over for
lunch or dinner to celebrate Shabbat.
That’s a lot of brisket, chicken and challah.
Many happy times – often religion-oriented – occurred at the
old house. We hosted bar- and bat-mitzvah brunches for our wonderful godchildren,
the annual Jewish Festival brunch, sometimes feeding nearly 100 friends, and
the baby-naming party for our great-niece Goldie. Several times, we were on the
“Sukkah Hop” circuit, and the makeshift structure we built for that festival
was overflowing with delirious neighborhood children filling up on sweets.
As happens in life, the house also was the setting for more
somber occasions, which also part of my memories. Marc and I sat shiva for both
of our mothers at that house, and, many of those evenings, our neighbor Isaac
Goodfriend, a world-renowned cantor of blessed memory, led the services. The
very walls of the house were transformed by his hauntingly beautiful voice.
In recent years, we had the honor of hosting our extended
family for Thanksgiving; one year, when our Aunt Doris turned 90, we
transformed our garage into a dining area to seat more than 50 relatives for
the meal on an usually cold November day. We also had countless birthday
parties – including my 50th and 60th – as well as wedding
showers and just general celebratory events.
Now, I truly understand what “a heap of living” means.
My mother-in-law used to say that aging isn’t for sissies,
and I understand every day how correct she was. Marc and I came to realize we
needed to live in a house different from the sprawling “five-four-and-a-door”
with the upstairs master suite and the huge backyard.
We had the house on the market about three years ago, but,
for various reasons, that never worked out. What to do next was a constant
topic of discussion for Marc and me.
That’s why it seemed bashert when, shortly before our 25th
wedding anniversary, I received a call from a lovely young woman who attends
our synagogue. We had met her a few times at meals at friends’ houses, but I
was puzzled as to why she was calling.
She explained that she, her husband and three children were
looking to buy a house and had heard we might be interested in selling even
though our house wasn’t on the market. We chatted for a few minutes and agreed
that they could see the house when we returned from our anniversary trip the
next week.
I updated our longtime realtor and then Marc and I headed
out to Ponte Vedra beach for a few days. The day we were returning to Atlanta,
we noticed a new house had been listed and wondered if we should see it.
We did see it – on May 3, our anniversary – and decided
almost immediately to make an offer on the house we ended up buying. The family
decided they wanted to purchase our house, so we now live not much more than a
mile from our previous location but in a house with a very different
configuration and location that works better for us.
The sale of the old house and purchase of the new house
might have seemed bashert, but that doesn’t mean it was easy. Perhaps the worst
moment came when the fully-loaded moving truck was headed to the new house, and
the contractor working here told me he thought the air conditioning might be
off. It was, and we ended up moving in 95-degree heat without air-conditioning.
(The upshot is that we now have a new HVAC system downstairs.)
Watching the movers lug heavy furniture, sweat pouring off
of all of us, the happy times at the old house – and the possibility of good
times in the new ones – seemed very far away indeed. Now, with everything put
away and a functioning air-conditioning, the future seems more positive and the
past has a more satisfying golden glow.
The strange part is that neither Marc nor I were
particularly sad about leaving our old house. Life has seasons just like the
natural world. Being in the autumn of our lives and with Rosh Hashanah
approaching, we are ready for a new phase.
Our new house is somewhat smaller and has a master bedroom
on the main floor, instead of upstairs. Our yard is much smaller than the one
where our young cousins played football at the Thanksgivings hosted at our
previous house and is maintained by the homeowners association.
While the dining room is a bit tight, we discovered a few
weeks after moving in that our new house entertains quite well. My sisters, all
of our first cousins and our aunt were here for brunch. We have a group photo
taken in front of a stand of trees and pictures of Goldie and her brother
Avraham at the fountain which is the primary backyard feature.
This weekend, I’m beginning preparations for the holiday
meals. I’ve kept the menus from years back, and it is interesting how much –
and little – they’ve changed over the years. Without question, the food was much more
kid-friendly when the under-12 set took up one side of our dining room table.
Over the years, I’ve happily offered gluten-free food,
vegetarian options and every other accommodation imaginable. This year, one of
our dear friends, who has had a Rosh Hashanah meal with us every year for more
than 20 years is – thankfully – recovering from throat cancer. I’ll make sure
there is extra chicken soup broth and plenty of applesauce made from the fruit
grown near our mountain house in Hendersonville, NC.
On Shemini Atzeret, which occurs near the end of the
eight-days of Sukkot, we’re serving fish as the main course because, as with
many of our friends of a certain age, our aging digestive systems can handle
only so much fatty red meat. In our younger days, that holiday was often when I
broke out the meat-stuffed cabbage and homemade corned beef.
No doubt it will be disconcerting to do major cooking in a
kitchen that is not yet completely familiar to me. Only my readers older than
50 will really understand this, but, even though I put everything away, that is
no guarantee I’ll remember where everything is. On the other hand, the pantry
we had installed is much better organized than the last one, which might make
up some of the time I spend searching for appliances and pots and pans.
What already feels like home is that I’ll be cooking under
total Brittany supervision, as hope springs eternal from Betsy and Rusty that I’ll
drop something. And, as always, Marc will be available – and good-natured – to run to the grocery store or farmer’s
market at the last minute when I discover I’m missing an ingredient.
It might be a strange conclusion in a blog that is supposed
to be about food, but what we put on the table doesn’t matter nearly as much as
who is sitting around it and the spiritual longing that brings them together.
As the poem says, it’s about a “heap of living” that makes
a house a home. Of course, a heap of matzo balls never hurt anything either.
Happy New Year.
