April 2010
Community Paper
copyright ©2010 by Community Paper College Park, Inc. All rights reserved.
Good Bye Elizabeth...
by Mike Derenthal, Derenthal Realty Group
So long Elizabeth. After ten great years, we’re moving on.
Elizabeth Avenue. Our first house. Old and decrepit on that first day we set foot through the creaky front door. Musty and in disrepair, but so much potential through the eager eyes of a couple in their twenties.
We sat at the dining room table with the Realtor and her clients - an elderly man and his ailing wife. We worked out the final details of the contract. Those nice older folks were about to sell their home to these nice younger folks. Selling the home they had spent 40 years in, raising their own family. I remember thinking at the time that forty years seemed like an eternity.
Ten years later it’s starting to seem a lot shorter.
Yes, we are moving. Our next old fixer upper has us all very excited. But this means it is time to say “so long” to the house that we have grown to love, and has so many of our own memories wrapped up inside.
Seeing as how I’m in the business of helping folks move, I thought this would be easier. But suddenly I’m realizing I have a real attachment to this old place.
I’m walking in and around the house, pausing, trying to soak in all of the memories specific to each space. Amazed at how many there are, and knowing there are many more that I’ve simply forgotten.
There’s that spot by the fireplace where my youngest nearly split her head open a year or so ago.
And that’s where I was standing on the front porch when an angry momma raccoon bit into the broom stick I was using to try to run her out of our crawlspace (not one of my smarter moves).
I won’t forget the living room that Holly and I painted three times in one night before we found a color she liked, just as the sun came up (back when Home Depot on East Colonial was open 24 hours.)
My wedding band still resides somewhere out in the front yard flower beds – lost in the middle of planting small shrubs that have since grown tenfold in size. Perhaps someone will find it years from now and wonder who it belonged to.
I have eerie memories of sitting alone on the couch in the living room one September night, watching the coverage of 9/11 on a portable black and white TV while I refinished wood floors. Holly had been on a flight between here and Nashville the morning of the attack. It was several chaotic hours before I confirmed her plane had landed safely. It was not until that evening that I first spoke with her on the phone, on that spot on the couch.
And ‘04 hurricanes. Who can forget ‘em, right? We were holed up in one of the bedrooms for Charlie, our one year old daughter oblivious to it all, eating moonpies in the dark while we listened intently to Tom Terry on the radio. The noisy, windy shake of the house interrupted only by the occasional and more violent thud of large oaks being blown to the ground around us, while the panicked screams of a neighbor’s cat in the distance sounded eerily human.
And the house itself and the many things we had to do to it along the way. Dropped ceilings w/ stained acoustical tiles. Smelly carpet over all the wood floors. Jalousie windows with broken slats. Rats in the attic. A stash of empty whiskey bottles someone had piled up through the years under the crawl space. A roof that couldn’t keep water out, and pipes that couldn’t keep it in.
Looking back – this place was pretty much a wreck when we bought it. But we were so proud! Our satisfaction of ownership was strong and intense. This place was ours. We owned it!
But as the years go by, that sense of ownership has evolved into something different. Call it maturity or perhaps just the realization that this 80 plus year old house may be standing here long after I’m gone. However you want to label it, something has changed.
Yes, our name is on the deed. We pay for it every month. But as we prepare to part ways, I’m realizing that ours are not the last set of memories that will be made in this place.
We’re simply passing through. Leaving some scuffs and bumps, making some improvements and changes, and adding a few more layers of paint.
And memories.
So long Elizabeth.
Feel free to drop me an email at mike@derenthalrealty.com.
by: Mike Derenthal, Derenthal Realty, www.DerenthalRealty.com
1520 Edgewater Drive, Suite E, Orlando, FL 32804
407-965-1919
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