The Longest Stay, 2

I did a post on Saturday about the various houses Joyce and I have lived in since our marriage in December 1969, a post occasioned by my realization that we have lived at our current place in Hudson, Ohio (see pic above), for twenty years (plus a couple of months), the longest occupancy we have ever bestowed upon an apartment or a house.

I spent virtually all of that Saturday blog about our previous places. So now it's the hour for 30 Church St., our house that stands right next to the funeral home parking lot, a funeral home, it turns out, which our house used to be a wing of. (Joyce knows all about this; I am not Joyce; I do not know all about this--thus, some superficiality here!)

The house dates to 1903 (coincidentally, the year that The Call of the Wild was published), though parts of it are older (just ask Joyce).

Anyway, as I wrote on Saturday, Joyce saw the place for sale when she was over in Hudson for some reason, and when she got home to our place in Aurora, she said something like this: "I just saw a house in Hudson, near the Green. You better not look at it because you'll want to buy it."

We quickly drove over to look at it. I wanted to buy it. We put in an offer. It was accepted. Pow. I now owned two houses (and could barely pay for one).

We immediately put our Aurora home on Pioneer Tr. up for sale, and it (fortunately) went very quickly--and to a couple I half-knew: She had been a middle school student of mine decades earlier.

And then commenced The Move. (Those of you with lots of books know what THAT means.) The new place also needed lots of attention: electric, plumbing, floors, bookshelves (many of these), etc. Money flowed from us like the Niagara River. But we had a fantastic work crew here--multi-talented and -capable. So things went quickly--if not exactly inexpensively.

My journal from September 1997 is full of details about The Move. Tedious to read now--and puzzling, too: How did we do all that? Joyce was still teaching at Hiram, and I was also at Hiram, teaching in the Weekend College (classes met only every other weekend). I graded papers and planned lessons as the sounds of hammers and power-saws pounded and roared nearby.

Our first night here was September 25, 1997. But the work here was far from done--a statement that remains ever true for homeowners.

It's been a great place for us. We can walk so many places. The summer farmers' market is a block from our house. The street is quiet. The neighbors are kind. Joyce and I each have a study. Etc.

When I decided to return to teaching (part-time) at Western Reserve Academy in the fall of 2001, I was able to walk or ride my bike to school every day: It's only a couple of blocks north of us. And ten happy years flew by while I was doing that--I retired again in June 2011.

We were living here when our son was married, when our two grandsons were born, when my father died,when Joyce retired from Hiram College, and on and on and on.

It's been our favorite place. By far.

But now? As I age (and age and age), I realize there is a problem: We have no full bath downstairs. Will we have to leave? A couple of times we have looked in sort of desultory fashion at retirement communities (here, in Oberlin) and at ranch houses in ranch-house communities, but they don't seem right for us. We have talked about converting the back screened porch into a bedroom-with-bath. Maybe we'll do that.

Neither of us wants to leave this place, ever. There is, you see, a third resident here. History. The house's. Ours. And history is a dear, dear companion, a companion whose absence would be shattering.