Two months before my husband proposed, he handed me a book to read on the plane for my upcoming 6 hour coast to coast flight. The book was “The Hard Questions, 100 questions to ask before you say I do”, as he placed the book in my hand he said, I have a copy as well and when you return let’s spend some time going over these questions….wow…my first thought was question 101 has got to be “will you marry me”!
When I returned from my business trip we spent several months going through the entire book, all 100 questions. We were both first marriage divorce survivors and determined to go into our next marriage better equipped to face all challenges.
One of the first questions in the book dealt with our home, how do we envision our home? Would we be open to family and friends? Do we prefer to be alone? Because we have six grown children between us, we expanded this question to wonder how we would react if one of our grown children needed to move in with us. We talked about how that could never happen, they were all settled, but if it did, we would both be open to taking in our grown children.
Our children were all grown and on their own when my husband and I met and started to date, in fact most of them didn’t meet one another until the rehearsal the night before our wedding. The first time all of our children, his 3 boys, my 3 girls, were together was an hour before we walked down the aisle the day of the wedding as we took family photos.
And so less than a month married, the first child returned, and a few weeks later, another joined us in our small 2-bedroom condo. Then, after a conversation with a third child, it became apparent to us between the financial crisis in 2008 and an impending divorce, our little family could go from 2 adults to 5 adults and 2 very small children. So, we made a decision to help support our displaced children and grandchildren by building a very large house and inviting our three adult children and two grandchildren to live with us.
It took a while for us to all settle into the new house and for my sweet hubby to get used to the noise levels generated not so much by the 2 and 3 years olds, but more by my two daughters…every night.
As this first group of tenants put back together the pieces of their lives and moved along, it was just in time for adult children four and five to join us. Again, one child came with a grandchild, so we were once again a 3-generation family living under the same roof.
At the height of all this craziness, and with a bit of overlap, we had 11 living in the “big house” one summer.
The house we built was in a new development with oversized homes, mostly all young families with their 2.5 perfect children. Because of the grandchildren playing in the yard, we refused to use any form of pesticide on the lawn, so in addition to the sometimes 5 older cars in the driveway, the yard was a natural covering of assorted weeds. One of my daughter’s friends was an avid yard sale enthusiast so she was always on the lookout for the large outdoor little kids’ plastic houses, castles, play sets, water tables, and push cars. Our back yard was the resting place for these treasures.
The great room was enormous, and with the cathedral ceiling reminiscent of a large entryway in a hotel, it was large enough to hold two complete sets of living room furniture plus a large play area for the kids. The room came in very handy as the kids moved in with their furniture and we had plenty of room.
Evening meals were always around the large dining room table where everyone pitched in to help cook, set up and clean. In the four years we owned the home, and with all our various tenants, I can’t recall one harsh word or argument. We were just happy to be together.
After dinner the kids and grandkids would often retire to the great room for a rousing game of guitar hero complete with the drums and the squeals of the little ones who were 2 and 3 at the time.
As I returned home one evening from being away overseas on a business trip my husband warned me there was something new in the back years, it was a 12′ wide blowup swimming pool, 3′ deep with two occupants in large blow-up floats smoking a butt in one hand, a cold Mountain Dew in the other.
In that instant any shred of hanging onto the Martha Stewart image of the perfect home left my body, I could begin to understand why the neighbors were reluctant to interact with us. Sometimes I wanted to just scream at the neighbors “just wait a few years”. But thankfully most of the time I just let it past.
As I look back on my life, I’m thankful our family went through this bonding experience together, it taught all of us that family is strong, that we have one another’s backs, that when times are tough, they always have a home to go to.
After four years and everyone healed and moved on, we sold “the big house” and we’ve managed to create a warm inviting space for continued family gatherings in our current smaller home, only this time when the party is over, everyone goes home.
Bradymom 