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Joyce Kiefer |
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Homes are places in the hearts of their people
of TheColumnists.com
Here’s an ’07
twist on the traditional holiday card:
“Merry Christmas
from our (soon to be foreclosed) house
to your house (that has been on the market all year).”
Houses have played the villain this past year. Bad loans to acquire them have brought on neighborhoods of foreclosures. Houses no longer sell like hot cakes, unless they’re in select neighborhoods of Silicon Valley where bidding exceeds the outrageous asking price. The median price of a house in Palo Alto, home of Stanford University, is $1,210,000–an increase in the past 12 months of 48.5%. The rest of Silicon Valley enjoys more spotty good fortune–or bad if you’re middle class and trying to buy your first home.
Think back to one of your first art assignments in kindergarten. Draw a house. Out came the brown crayons. Whether you drew your own place or your dream house, the result was the same architectural style as everyone else in the class: a front door in the middle with a window on each side and maybe a chimney on the roof. The sun hovered overhead and a tree stood nearby. If you put yourself in the picture, you wore a big smile.
You smiled not because you knew that the property value would increase 100-fold by the time you grew up, and that if you inherited the house, you would pay the same low tax as your parents if they owned it when Proposition 13 passed in 1978. You smiled at what you didn’t draw--the emotional interior that turned your walls and roof into a home.
I don’t like the interchange of the words “house” and “home”. One implies a business transaction; the other, personal refuge and a family universe. A house provides physical shelter and an investment. A home is both a physical place and a place in the heart you can either rent or own. It’s a house when you paint all the rooms in Navajo White with an eye to future sale. It’s a home when you dare to use burnt orange. A house is where you light. A home is where you nest.
Every three or four years a friend and her husband buy and sell the house where they live. Their garage is always filled with unpacked boxes awaiting the next move. They change tile and remodel bathrooms as if they were staying, but resale is on their minds. They’ve made great profits in these turnovers. Nonetheless, they manage to create an atmosphere of enthusiasm and welcoming warmth within the walls as long as they live there. But a sense of detachment hangs in the air.
As I was growing up I became attached to certain homes where friends of my parents lived. Their walls exhaled the life of the family within and warmly embraced the visitor. Their owners identified with the place and were there for a long haul through life.
One favorite was a multi-story square stucco house set in the Berkeley hills. Mr. and Mrs. Gamon bought the house sometime in the 1930’s when Mr. Gamon (“Mr.”, “Mrs.” or “Miss” were the first names of every adult) retired from the Foreign Service due to health. As I walked up the broad entry steps to the front porch, I anticipated adventure.
Inside were shelves filled with books on every subject. A glass case held an ancient Greek ball and small statue. A huge grandfather clock bonged the hours from a landing on the main staircase. I loved the view of the Golden Gate Bridge out the dining room window, the scent of roast lamb, the sound of Edith Piaf on the phonograph, the musty odor that escaped from the unheated store room, the thunder box toilet downstairs, and the roomful of dolls where I played when the granddaughters came to visit. The Gamons stayed there until Mr. Gamon died in the ‘60’s.
Another favorite was the shingle-sided house built by Mr. Heyde in the outer reaches of San Francisco where the streets are named for foreign capitals. The house was on Athens Street but should have been on Berlin. The City had planted a globe-shaped tree by the sidewalk near the front steps. The second floor with the bedrooms was unheated. Mr. Heyde believed blankets were good enough. The downstairs felt warm with dark woodwork and Mrs. Heyde’s wonderful meals that sometimes included the rabbits they raised under the back steps. For a while they owned the lot next door where their daughter Emma kept a horse. Never married, Emma and her sister Martha remained in the house until several years after their parents passed away.
A rented house can still be a home, of course. The Victorian flat rented in San Francisco by the Leyva family enticed me as much as the others, although differently. The Hunters Point neighborhood was a bit dicey safety-wise, but no one bothered the Leyvas. These five brothers and sisters left behind seven more brothers and sisters in Mexico.
One sister who immigrated married briefly. When her husband died, she moved back with her siblings. None of them ever married. All of them turned their unheated flat into a hospitality house for whoever showed up for Sunday dinner, Christmas Eve, or the Levantamiento. Herberto (I was allowed to use first names with the Leyvas) brought the coal oil heater into the living room late in the afternoon. I watched its little flame go to work and actually warm the big room with the high ceiling and the nook with the bay window overlooking the upward slope of Jerrold Avenue. Then the 15 or so of us filed down a long, dark hall to the dining room. The bay window there overlooked the repair garage below. From huge pots in their large kitchen the sisters ladled platefuls of redolent chicken soup, which they followed with macaroni salad slippery with pimientos and mayonnaise. I was glad the menu seldom varied.
The Leyvas bought a house of their own nearby after their ancient Irish landlords passed away. By then I had grown up. I never knew if their bungalow needed a coal oil heater to drive off the chill of San Francisco.
I’m a nester from way back. I grew up in a house built for my parents in 1936. I get to return whenever I like because my son and his family live there. My husband and I still live in the house we bought in 1966. We’ve expanded and remodeled over the years. I keep a room full of my dolls and my kids’ toys for our grandchildren to play with when they visit.
I’m thankful for the homes that have peopled my life like friends. I appreciate that their occupants and my parents had the luxury of being able to stay put and let the place where they lived absorb and reflect their lives. I re-enter these special places in my mind and blow away the dollar signs that stick to the notions of house and home.
©2007 by Joyce Kiefer. The photos are the property of the author. All rights reserved. This column first posted Nov. 26, 2007.
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