The other day, GB and I met with a realtor. I didn’t expect it, but as I began talking about selling the house, I cried. Surprised myself! I have known intellectually that selling would be difficult, but I really thought I was emotionally prepared.
I wasn’t. I’m not.
There are people who move frequently. That’s always amazed me because the last time we moved, which was in 1977, I swore it would be the last time. We moved during a May snowstorm from our little cottage style house near DU to our current. Hauling all the unnecessary stuff we had collected in just two years of marriage seemed daunting then. Now, 48 years later, it’s much worse. Now, the collections will not move with us. They’ll be sold, donated or trashed.
Then, I could never had known what this house and eventual garden would come to mean for us. But it has been the touchstone of our lives.
We sat with the realtor at the farm table I had refinished a few years ago. It was originally built by an artisan from Mexico who specialized in rustic furniture. It was created to sit outside next to the perineal garden. After a few seasons, I decided it should come inside and live as our dining room table. The weather had beaten it up a bit, so I was determined to refinish it. The job took a few months of sanding, dusting, sanding again, sanding some more and finally some linseed oil to bring in the sheen.
We gave the realtor a bit of history. The house had been designed and built by an architect named Donald Roark. He lived there for a couple of years then sold to a pair of attorneys, one of which would become a federal judge. They raised their three children in the house, the parents sleeping in the upstairs master bedroom, now our den, and the children on the ground floor in the three bedrooms that were located there. Those three bedrooms, rec room, bathroom, and laundry room turned into our two bedroom suite.
As I sat at the table, I could look out of the big windows that overlook the garden overwhelmed by winter. I know the first rooted flowers will begin to emerge in a few weeks, or probably just a few days as the winter has been terribly weak this year. The various bushes around the Woodlands Garden will start to pop out. Then the dandelions will emerge and make spring seem good until they turn into floppy, seed full sacs that blow helter skelter in the wind. If we’re lucky, we’ll get a few days of rain that will turn everything that gorgeous shade of new green. The June flowers will blossom, the bees and the lady bugs will buzz through their favorite flowers for a nice meal of nectar or an aphid or two. The lettuces will be ready for eating. The veggies will have been planted but the harvest will be stymied by our impending move. We’ll be looking for a new home for Dolores and Olive, our last hens.
I looked around at the murals painted by the lost friend. They’ll be erased by the inevitable coats of paint to bring the house into a neutral state of being. The chicken yard will be resodded and the tell-tale evidence of chicken misadventures will be, what? Neutralized.
So, these thoughts, I guess, made me cry. All this would be gone to me in the Autumn. The seasons which I loved to watch our garden experience would be bequeathed to the new owners. Will they lovingly embrace the garden? Will they host parties where hundreds of people can walk through and exclaim their envy at the private park in the middle of Denver.
Then, the optimistic side of me remembers that I will be excited for the move. The garden I can no longer tend will be replaced by a smaller, much smaller version. There will be a small park just across the street. There’s a large, gigantic park two short blocks away. There are parkways planted with trees that blossom in the spring and turn a glorious red in the Autumn.
It’ll be a half block walk to the town center for some restaurants and shops. The Urban Farm is about a mile away, much closer than the previous 18-mile round trip I would take when I volunteered there. And I can volunteer there again! Two of our dearest friends live about 5 minutes away.
The apartment returns me to very near where I grew up in Park Hill. It lands me at the site of the old Denver airport which brings back wonderful memories of my college years. I used to hitch from Boulder to Combs Aircraft, a small airfield attached to Stapleton in those years. Then I’d ask if anyone was flying to Aspen and amazingly, someone always was! I’d hop in the plane, and we’d fly over the high peaks, landing at the dangerously small airport in Aspen. The planes were always single engine prop ships. We’d use the thermals to help us lift over the high peaks. One autumn we flew into a sea of gold Aspen. As we prepared to land, the whole world turned gold and red. I thought we would die. It was exhilarating.
While I’m sad to leave, I’m excited to go back to my childhood neighborhood where more memories will be unearthed, and new ones will be created.
Air. 
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