Home
For some reason, I’ve been thinking about home lately. About the little house I sold in Atlanta before coming to Africa. Friends thought I should keep the house, as security and an investment. But I couldn’t fully immerse myself in this new life with a mortgage and renters on another continent. So I sold my sweet little cottage of a house and think about it every now and then. I don’t want it back. But living in it and working on it brought me such joy, especially working in the yards, transplanting Hydrangeas and Rose-of-Sharons. I have a photo of the hardwoods from my bedroom window and I look at the photo occasionally, remembering the huge Oak that seemed like a friend. He was always there, standing strong, through every season.
Even though I lived just inside the highly trafficked I-285 (the highway circling Atlanta), it felt like a small, country place with deep woods in the back. These post-World War II houses were built on two parallel dead-end roads, so the little pocket neighborhood has few cars on the roads. And giant trees everywhere. My house was built in 1949 with hardwood floors and plaster walls. Originally 2b/2b, the previous owner, Rick, added a master bedroom and bath to the back. I then added a deck and a sunroom off my bedroom.
The acre lot is 80 feet wide and a few hundred feet deep, mostly covered in Oak and Poplar, with spare Dogwoods growing in their shadow. A friend, Roy, recently bought Margie’s house next door. Margie had a stroke soon after I arrived in Kenya. She’s fine (she’s too hard-headed to be any other way) at 84 years of age. But the house was too much for Margie, so Roy moved in and is enjoying his neighbors, the young couple, Jeremy and Tara, who bought my house. Roy says they recently spotted coyote in the woods. I’ve seen a fox back there and, once, I saw the strangest animal sitting in my favorite Oak, about 25 feet from the ground. It actually looked like a cat with rabbit legs and ears. I looked at it through the through my camera's high-powered photolens and even up close it looked like a cat/rabbit in a tree. Strange.
I even miss cutting the grass every Saturday and trimming the Crepe Myrtles in February!! There are 12 huge Myrtles, pink, dividing my back yard from Margie’s and they create the most beautiful, natural fence.
I bought that little house because it reminded me of my grandmother’s yard in Hazelhurst, Georgia. The giant Hydrangea under James’ bedroom window sealed the deal for me. And Jeremy, the new owner, said he wanted the house for the same Hydrangea!!! Grandma had huge Lantana bushes, too, which grow in Kenya all along the roadsides and spread a gorgeous, woody scent. Thinking about Grandma’s country yard reminds me of the Georgia Thumpers that would cling to her front porch screen. These grasshoppers are spectacular visions, perfection in design and color. Yellow and black, they measure about 4 inches long and 1 inch wide. Sleek, yet muscular in form, they demanded our rapt attention. My sisters, cousins and I used to simply stare at them, as though hypnotized.
In Kenya, in my house, there are long red and black ants, little flies with circular wings, mosquitoes, lake flies, spiders of various models and geckos, pale and fast. Grasshoppers are dully gray and rare. What I wouldn’t give to see a shinging black and yellow Georgia Thumper right now. What I wouldn’t give to see Grandma again, carrying in her apron the ripest tomatoes, radishes and lima beans from her garden.
Home. It’s as much about the life growing in the ground and living in bushes, at the root of grasses and the tops of trees, as it is about the walls and plumbing and roofing.
Even though I lived just inside the highly trafficked I-285 (the highway circling Atlanta), it felt like a small, country place with deep woods in the back. These post-World War II houses were built on two parallel dead-end roads, so the little pocket neighborhood has few cars on the roads. And giant trees everywhere. My house was built in 1949 with hardwood floors and plaster walls. Originally 2b/2b, the previous owner, Rick, added a master bedroom and bath to the back. I then added a deck and a sunroom off my bedroom.
The acre lot is 80 feet wide and a few hundred feet deep, mostly covered in Oak and Poplar, with spare Dogwoods growing in their shadow. A friend, Roy, recently bought Margie’s house next door. Margie had a stroke soon after I arrived in Kenya. She’s fine (she’s too hard-headed to be any other way) at 84 years of age. But the house was too much for Margie, so Roy moved in and is enjoying his neighbors, the young couple, Jeremy and Tara, who bought my house. Roy says they recently spotted coyote in the woods. I’ve seen a fox back there and, once, I saw the strangest animal sitting in my favorite Oak, about 25 feet from the ground. It actually looked like a cat with rabbit legs and ears. I looked at it through the through my camera's high-powered photolens and even up close it looked like a cat/rabbit in a tree. Strange.
I even miss cutting the grass every Saturday and trimming the Crepe Myrtles in February!! There are 12 huge Myrtles, pink, dividing my back yard from Margie’s and they create the most beautiful, natural fence.
I bought that little house because it reminded me of my grandmother’s yard in Hazelhurst, Georgia. The giant Hydrangea under James’ bedroom window sealed the deal for me. And Jeremy, the new owner, said he wanted the house for the same Hydrangea!!! Grandma had huge Lantana bushes, too, which grow in Kenya all along the roadsides and spread a gorgeous, woody scent. Thinking about Grandma’s country yard reminds me of the Georgia Thumpers that would cling to her front porch screen. These grasshoppers are spectacular visions, perfection in design and color. Yellow and black, they measure about 4 inches long and 1 inch wide. Sleek, yet muscular in form, they demanded our rapt attention. My sisters, cousins and I used to simply stare at them, as though hypnotized.
In Kenya, in my house, there are long red and black ants, little flies with circular wings, mosquitoes, lake flies, spiders of various models and geckos, pale and fast. Grasshoppers are dully gray and rare. What I wouldn’t give to see a shinging black and yellow Georgia Thumper right now. What I wouldn’t give to see Grandma again, carrying in her apron the ripest tomatoes, radishes and lima beans from her garden.
Home. It’s as much about the life growing in the ground and living in bushes, at the root of grasses and the tops of trees, as it is about the walls and plumbing and roofing.
posted by Cindi at 4:02 AM
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