“Did you get what you asked for?” I was pondering the question my friend
had asked me earlier as I walked through the vacant rooms of our house
one last time.  Of course, she had meant did the house bring the price we had
asked for in the sale.  As I continued looking through the house,
I remembered it had been nearly seventeen years since I had
seen these rooms empty.  The rooms echoed my footsteps as if they were
a bit sad also at the emptiness so foreign to them.  It was as if I were
in a strange place.  Had it really been that many years since I first came
here with my husband along with three children in tow?

It didn’t seem so long ago that I heard my 13-year-old daughter say,
“Can I have the room with the purple carpet?”  I walked into that bedroom
where the purple carpet still remained along with the purple stenciling
on the walls where she had created her work of art.   Several times we had
considered redecorating the room, even to the point of buying the paint,
but we used the paint somewhere else and somehow the room
managed to stay unchanged.

I meandered on down the hall to another bedroom and I
wondered how many times my husband had repaired the walls in
this room after Justin, our “wall abuse” child had joined our family
a couple of years after we had moved to this house.

In the living room, now so bare, I imagined I could hear the laughter
and squeals of children sitting around the Christmas tree
that usually stood before the bay window at Christmas time.  I thought of
the year that a young friend had brought us a real tree from the woods
that we had to repair with duct tape.  We even put a stuffed animal in
the bare spot because we didn’t want to hurt his feelings by acting
as if the tree were anything but perfect.  I looked at that window behind
where the tree would have been, and I was almost sure I could
see “Rocky” the cat, sprawled above everything as he arrogantly
watched his kingdom of human peasants from his royal cat throne.

I turned toward the kitchen and I cringed once more at that
slight shadow on the floor next to the refrigerator where I had spilled
an entire gallon of salad dressing.  The carpet was new at the time
and although I scrubbed with everything imaginable, the stain
never completely came out and I had finally just
placed a pretty throw rug over the area.

I walked through the kitchen and on down the steps to the basement
to the family/recreation room, better known as the “wrecked room”.
I stood staring at that old black cast iron stove which was about the
only thing remaining in the house.  It was like an old friend as it kept
the basement warm in the winter and I often sat a pot of ham and beans
on the top of it, allowing them to cook slowly all day.  Over against the
east wall I noticed the indentions in the carpet where the old upright piano
had been.  There were a lot of good times around that piano.
It was there that I taught my son, Jeremy, to play “Moonlight Sonata.”
He refused to take real piano lessons but just wanted to know where
to put his fingers on the piano and before long he had memorized the entire song.

I looked out the window where the kids used to play “Fox and Geese” in
the snow and I almost felt I could hear my daughter, Julie, ask,
“Mama, we’re having so much fun!  Can Angie stay overnight?”  The number
of children around the house seemed to multiply as my other children
would often want a friend to stay on the very same night or weekend.

There was the time that Jeanna asked to invite a few friends for her 13th birthday.
A few friends turned out to be 19 friends, and while I was busy preparing food,
one of them decided to show the group how he could hold his breath until he passed out.  Fortunately, we stopped that little game.  I thought about writing
the surgeon general requesting a warning sign to be posted on birthday supplies
and candles stating: “WARNING: Children’s parties can be hazardous to parental sanity.”

I walked out into the yard and stood under the tall maple trees that now
towered high above the house and their limbs even shaded the deck.
They were only small trees when we first moved to this house.  A garage
now stands at the edge of the yard where there was nothing but lawn when we
came here.  I remembered my husband, his Dad, and a couple of neighbors
working together to build it.  We had such good neighbors.

As I stepped up into the van and gazed toward the house one last time,

I thought about how that house had been such a big part of my life for so many years.   I asked myself the question,  “Did I get what I asked for?”  I would have to answer
a resounding, “Yes, I got what I asked for and so much more,
for who can put a price on family, friends, good neighbors, and love.
 
I wondered what changes the new owners would make.
Would they have purple carpet, stenciled walls, and children’s parties?
Whether they do or not, I hope they also get what they asked for…and more.

By
Pamela R. Blaine
April 23, 2002