A Middle-Aged Neighborhood

With a young and energetic dog in our midst again, I have forced myself back into a regular walking routine. I became lazy over the past few years. My exercise buddy Raven, our senior dog, had surgery on her leg at about the same time my middle-aged motivation began to wane. Good exercise aside, walking Tonka has also given me a chance to become reacquainted with our little corner of suburbia.

Built in the 1950s, the neighborhood where we live is also middle-aged. Here you find small brick ranch homes situated one after the other on a predictable grid. The developers chose typical suburban street names, one area using only the letter “C” (Cedar, Cherry, Concord, Crescent) and another named after colleges (Auburn, Baylor, Princeton, Rutgers).

When my parents moved from New Jersey to Colorado in 1958, we bunked for a few months in my uncle’s basement just one block east of here. That isn't the reason I chose this area. Instead, a mixed bag of issues related to selling my townhouse and purchasing a single-family home all seemed to converge in this one place.

One of my preferences was to live in an older, established neighborhood. I was ready for some space to dig in and get my hands dirty and boy, did they ever get dirty. A former rental, this house had been neglected for quite some time but I could tell it had good bones. Over the past 14 years it has been transformed from one of the neighborhood dregs to a place that shines with pride of ownership. My early jaunts up and down these suburban streets provided inspiration for home improvement and decorating ideas, as well as guidance about what not to do.

For instance, there is a home a few blocks from here with trim painted a lively Pepto-Bismol pink. Another house sports an ample front porch constructed in thick, beefy craftsman style, not exactly a good match for a mid-century modern brick ranch but otherwise nicely done. At the bottom of the hill someone added a second story over a small, enclosed carport. It looks as if a narrow trailer dropped right out of the sky and landed neatly on top. They painted the second story a mustard color to boot, just in case you didn’t notice the unusual architecture all by itself.

Up near the school live the Denver Broncos fans, complete with “Broncos Fan Parking Only” signs, blue and orange artificial flowers planted in the pots, and a blue lighthouse bedecked with the Broncos logo. A few blocks west a series of separate houses display first an extensive collection of cheerful garden gnomes, then plastic deer cavorting in the yard, then snarling cement lions guarding a front entrance, and finally a flock of pink flamingos looking hopelessly lost and thirsty in this city on the high plains.

We also have more than our fair share of foreclosed homes. You can tell right off, knee-high vegetation in the yard, legal notices stuck to the windows, a sad story behind each door.

Then there is the mystery house, unkempt, curtains perpetually drawn, weeds growing defiantly in an all-rock front yard designed to suppress weeds. On the roof is a large cross, illuminated with white Christmas lights, and three trumpeting angels next to a hand painted wooden sign proclaiming, in blood red paint, “I AM COM…” The final section of wood seems to have broken off but the message is still clear. For me, the house evokes a Stephen King story, Carrie.

My brother and his family live in one of the newer suburbs south of Denver, a community with restrictive covenants. The homes are beautiful, the yards immaculate, but there is a sameness, a planned, safe, boring repetition to it all. Maybe someday I too will choose such a lifestyle. For now, I prefer to dwell among the thirsty flamingos, the Carrie house, and the second story addition that fell from the sky. All these places are interesting in their own way. Together they help define the collective character of our middle-aged neighborhood.

A Haunting Tale

In 1998, my eldest brother Rich was diagnosed with cancer. At the same time, my mother’s health began to take a turn for the worse. She had suffered health problems for quite some time and this particular year she became even more helpless. Dad tried his darnedest to care for her as long as he could. Rich died in late August, less than six weeks before my mother’s death in early October.

My brother Ted and I worried so much about dad. Losing a child is something no parent expects or should ever have to go through, no matter the age. The loss of his wife compounded dad’s agony. She had been his rock, his home, for the better part of his life. Ted and I later revealed that we both secretly felt it would not be much longer until dad joined his beloved wife and son.

Dad had never lived alone. He moved from his parents’ home, to the Civilian Conservation Corps, to his first marriage with Rich’s mother, to the Army infantry in the Philippines during World War II, to a painful divorce and back home with his parents who helped raise his son, then later to his second marriage with my mother. Now he was left to wander an empty house. Dad found the silence, the loneliness, and the profound grief to be overwhelming at times.

Then one day, dad told us a story. It was the middle of the night and as typical, he was reading a book. Mom’s room was next door, a small private room where she kept a desk and an antique maple twin bed. You know the kind, with heavy iron bed rails and four wooden slats spaced evenly apart to support the box spring and mattress. Well that night dad heard a loud “bang” coming from mom’s room. He instinctively called out to the dark house: “Loretta, is that you?”

The next morning dad discovered that one of the slats had fallen out of mom’s bed, as they often did. But in the past this only happened when someone sat on the bed, or possibly when the bed’s occupant turned over while sleeping. Dad was convinced mom had returned.

Over the next several months, he related stories of his experiences in the house. Once he was whittling in the basement when he was sure someone stood right behind him, watching his work. Another time he swore he heard voices. He repeatedly sensed at least one and sometimes two presences in the house. “Makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up,” he told me. At first he was frightened, then he began to engage in one-sided conversations with the visitors. Was there anyone in the house with dad? I don’t know and it doesn’t matter one bit. Real or imagined, dad was comforted by the idea of his wife and son returning to him. He lived another six years, all alone in that house, during which time he spoke to mom and Rich frequently. He was absolutely convinced of their presence.

A few months before dad died, he passed out while shopping at the grocery store. The paramedics took him to the emergency room and I was called to his side. Dad always hated hospitals and had no use for all the fussing and carrying on that occurred in those places. The emergency room doctor said she would be willing to discharge him, provided there would be someone at home with him that night. Dad replied without hesitation: “My wife is there!” Although I knew there was no physical presence in the house, as the doctor expected, I said nothing. My mother’s spiritual presence was good enough for dad; it got him released.

One of my family duties, something mom and I shared in years past, was the responsibility of caring for family graves. After mom died, I visited Fort Logan National Cemetery regularly to bring flowers and decorations. At that cemetery are buried my grandfather, an uncle, my brother, my mother, and now my father too. Before dad died, whenever I visited mom’s grave I talked to her, often blubbering away as I conveyed stories of the events in our lives, both good and bad. Like dad, I believed her spirit was right there with me. Yet not once since dad has been gone have I felt that presence at the cemetery, or anywhere else for that matter. Once they were reunited, I’m certain they left this Earth together. Their grave is now simply a marker to help remind us of the love that has moved from the suburbs of Denver, all the way to the stars.