Big Old Houses

Big old Queen Anne style house down
the street from us that I like to fantasize
about growing up in or raising my
 kids in.

I've just been corresponding with a friend about houses.  He was kind enough to share with me a little about the house he grew up in - a twelve room Tudor in which he was very happy.  That is until something happened to change his life.

Something always happens - but until that time, life for a child can be idyllic in a big old house.

I love big old houses.  I love to fantasize about either growing up in one or raising my kids in one.

Edwardian house in London

I did not have that experience growing up.  And, unfortunately, neither did my children.  We lived in parsonages.  Some lovely homes and some not so lovely.  And, while we were, for the most part, made to feel at home, it wasn't ours.

It wasn't like Robert Frost's "The Death of the Hired Man" who says "Home is the place where when you have to go there they have to take you in."  In a parsonage situation, home is the place that, when they want to they can make you leave.

My daughter and her husband have an older 12 room house.  It fulfills my fantasy.  Every time I'm there I make them promise they'll never move.  The house is full of love, i.e., books paintings and toys and musical instruments and kids and dogs and sofas and technology and big vats of soup on the stove.

Dr. Oliver Sacks, in his book "Uncle Tungsten," writes many pages about the house in which he grew up with his siblings, his aunt, and his parents who were both doctors.  He says this:

I grew up before the second world war in a huge, rambling Edwardian house in Northwest London. 

He goes on to say how happy he was there.  Until the war broke out and some terrible things happened. Things do eventually happen to change our lives- but if you grew up in a big old beautiful house full of love, you had a leg up on the rest of us.



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