A love letter to 1343 Del Norte

Today's moving day for the kids, pets and I (as Kevin stays in Houston to manage the packers and movers). In a fit of maudlinism a few weeks ago, I sat down to purge my grief over leaving this house. The following is a stream-of-conscious piece, so please forgive the naval-gazing and sap.

1343 Del Norte is where all the “good stuff” (thus far) has happened. I brought my babies home to this house; I rocked them to sleep and put them down for naps in this house while the sunlight streamed in through their bedroom windows.  We learned about the families of birds in our trees and watched a mother screech owl teach her little ones to fly from the safety of our fence. I named and knew the personalities of some of our resident squirrels and Molly, the cat, even saved 2 tiny infant squirrels from certain death after they fell from their nest in a windstorm.

We enjoyed seven Christmases here. Both Anna and Jack’s first Christmases took place here--from babies who didn’t quite understand what was going on, to preschoolers who suddenly grasped the magic of the season. The Easter Bunny also visited Anna and Jack in this house. He’d leave their Easter baskets on the big windowsill in the front room every year and then we’d go to the backyard to hunt the eggs that he’d left.

We endured Hurricane Ike in this house. Behind the safety of our boarded up windows, I remember laying wide-eyed in bed, (pregnant in my first trimester with Jack) in the middle of the night, listening to the wind howl unceasing and unrelenting outside, (as if a 747 was landing in our backyard, I remember thinking at the time) as Kevin and Anna lay peacefully asleep next to me. The following morning, we awoke to find a tangled jungle of leaves and limbs in our backyard and a fallen tree, miraculously felled away from our bedroom, yet onto the power pole, rendering us without electricity for 2 weeks. I felt immensely safe in this home, it’s brick walls and solid 1950’s craftmanship wrapped around my little family, holding us tight through the eye of the storm, just as its brick walls had done for its other families in the strong hurricanes of the past.

Many a meal was cooked in this kitchen and I’ll never love another kitchen as much as I love the remodeled one that Kevin worked for months on. Designed and decorated by me, I’ll always feel like it was the perfect marriage of 1950’s ranch and modern charm. Crisp and clean with the white cabinets and farm house sink. It was my favorite room in this house and the room where I logged most of my hours here.

Our beloved backyard, which was the envy of many of our friends and the location of so many playdates. Even in the dead of summer, it always feel just a little cooler back there. In the spring and fall, when we would see any Painted Lady butterflies, we always speculated on whether or not they were some of the ones that Anna hatched and nurtured from her butterfly habitat (a birthday gift from Nora Nester, circa 2010 or so). Hummingbirds love the shrimp plants and the cannas and sometimes perch right outside the master bedroom window, so that you can see them in a rare, up close position.  

Candlelight Park was an almost daily outting for us for so many years. At first, with a wee baby in the Baby Bjorn, strapped to me as I walked the trails, then when Anna got old enough to toddle, all she wanted to do was challenge her walking capabilities (and my nerves) by teetering on the edge of the bridge of the playscape. Over the years, the playscape there has shrunk, as my children have grown taller and more physically capable.

This will always be the first house that my kids will remember living in. Perhaps they’ll dream of this house in the middle of the night, groggy with images of the hallway or maybe their bedrooms. Maybe it’ll be a safe haven in their dreams from scary monsters or maybe it’ll always be the place that they’re seeking in their dreams. Maybe, one day when they’re grown and purchasing a home for themselves, they’ll see a nuance in another house that reminds them of this one and it will feel familiar and comforting and cause them to decide that “this is the one.”

I know many families have come and gone from this house over the years, some staying longer and some shorter than us, but this home will forever have a piece of my heart. It’s where we became a family and, for that, I’ll be always grateful.

Then there was one...

We lost our dear, sweet Simon yesterday, at the ripe old age of 16. Simon was the most affectionate, sweetest cat I've ever known. His favorite things is the world were his humans, (namely me) "making biscuits" and eating. Speaking of "making biscuits," that reminds me of the first time I ever laid eyes on him.

Kevin and I had just lost our young cat, Nugget to a strange tumor that took his life. I was grieving pretty heavily as was Nugget's littermate, Banjo. So, we agreed to get another kitten to help us all to heal. We had decided that we'd go to PetsMart over the weekend to see if any kittens were available. We had several specifications for this new kitten: 1. it had to be a singleton because, after witnessing how closely bonded the littermates, Banjo and Nugget were, we couldn't bear to think about taking siblings away from each other and 2. it had to be another orange tabby--preferably one with some white on it too, similar to Nugget. So, the day before we were to go to PetsMart to pick out our new kitten, I decided that it would be smart to go ahead to PetsMart to pick up some of the necessary kitten supplies that we'd need for the new kitten--so that we wouldn't have to juggle a new kitten plus all of the kitten's accessories in one shopping trip. Off to PetsMart I went.

After filling my basket with all of the new kitten supplies, I couldn't resist the pull of the area at the front of the store where the Humane Society set up shop to house adoptions. A few cages down the line, what did I see but a single, orange and white tabby, laying blissfully on his back, making biscuits in the air and purring so loudly that I could hear him from several cages away. Done. Sold. Wrap him up, I'm taking him home.

They'd named him "Taz" (as in Tazmanian Devil) at the shelter because he did have some special, spastic characteristics. But he was a lover from the get-go. He and Banjo took to one another almost immediately. In fact, if anything, Simon asserted himself as the boss from the moment he met Banjo and Banjo obliged him that. That character trait held fast all of Simon's life. He was the Alpha Cat for sure.

And what a chow-hound! Simon LOVED his food. In fact, he loved his food so, that he literally ate himself into a serious bout with diabetes that he battled for the last 10 years of his life--which is an extraordinarily long time. With his disease came the discovery of the best vet ever--Dr. Oeben, a cat-only vet. She loved Simon as much as we did and the feelings were mutual for Simon, too. When we'd go in to see Dr. Oeben, he'd give her his signature head-butt-to-the-face, which she correctly returned with a kiss to the head. He'd always purr so loudly the whole time she was examining, poking and prodding him that she'd have to pinch his little nose shut in order to stop the purring long enough for her to hear his heart beat.

Simon's will to live was incredible. In his later years, about once a year, he'd get deathly ill and threaten to die (and subsequently, cost us many hundreds of dollars) but he always battled back. The last few years, he'd begun to lose weight and really was looking old. He'd grown this strange horn-like back toenail that confounded Dr. Oeben, as well as a gooey, oozey tumor on his neck. By the end of his life, I'd lost count, but think he was down to only 1 or 2 teeth left. One year ago, we lost Simon's best friend, Banjo. I feel as though some of Simon's will to live left along with Banjo.

Over the weekend, Simon got ill and wasn't able to bounce back. He wasn't himself. For years, I've always thought to myself that, when Simon stopped eating, that was his sign to us that he was done. On Tuesday, for the first time ever, he stopped eating. I knew it was time.

Simon was my cat. He loved me the best and he was my favorite too. His head always smelled like vanilla and I could recognize his meow from a mile away. There will never be another Simon Birch and, a little piece of my heart died with him yesterday. Is it dumb to say that you have an animal soul mate? Probably, but I feel as though our souls were connected somehow and I hope that they always will be. Rest in peace my sweet boy. May you frolic, get a crazy horsey-tail when feeling playful and make biscuits forever.