"Our house was a very, very fine house"

This is where we grew up. Not where we spent the majority of our childhoods, Kimbies and I, but the mostness of them.....Here, in this thirty-two room playhouse.

I remember the very first time we saw it, empty except for the furniture that had been custum made to fit the nooks and crannies....that came with the deal...the giant round satin couches filled with goose down.....We tried them out fannies first, over and over again, laughing as the brocade spit feathers flying....the toy box under the windows, wrapped in a semi circle, empty, except for a few old crayons and the scribblings of children before us.....my beds, set head to foot lining the east wall, wrapped in a meandering wrought iron grapevine.....I took my fingers and traced the walls....New Orleans was there, in all her dark and smokey taboo....hand painted on the walls....

We moved in and rocked the neighborhood. Our parents were beautiful, he, handsome and successful and rarely home, she, whispy and blonde and "different". It was here that Curty learned to crawl, and babble, and ride a bike, that Skinny and Chance were born. It was here that we first learned to believe.....

in happenchance
and fairytales
and to dance to our own music....
it was here that we learned there were a set of tracks that
were laid right side up and wrong side down
and that it was okay to cross
them,
skinny legs flying on spider bikes with banana seats and spokes spiked with poker cards and clothespins.....

here that we learned unconditional love.....
to not be afraid of poltergiests or ghosts or things that goes bump in the night....
to take in strays, because they're not really stray after all,
they're just waiting for you to open the door....
that man could really walk on the moon....
if he wanted to.....

It was here that we were free.....
That we lived our Pippi Longstocking childhoods......
riding bikes down hallways,
depositing each other, clinging,
down the laundrey shoot....one story, two, three into a mountain of dirty clothes.....
swimming in Mom's leftover calgoned bathwater until it was tepid and filthy....
Coloring on walls, higher than we could reach and down halls that led to eternity....
flying in cardboard box race cars down spiral staircases....bumpity bumpity bump until I broke my nose and
a big toe
and somebody had to stop us,
playing bartender with this wine and that and some soda to make it all fizzle,
building forts in the flower beds
and tree houses with mattresses, seventeen strong kids in a line to lift it,
digging tunnels to nowhere
and China
and downtown....

And here in this house,
Kimbies slept with goldfish and hermit crabs
in a pink princess bed with a pink princess phone
and
I slept with ghosts at the end of the hall....

When we caravaned out in the middle of the night,
took flight
with empty suitcases
to our next adventure
we didn't know to say the words....

"Thank you, house"......

you hippie, gypsy, haunted little house.....

Tent City

It's quiet now. Finally. Five o'clock in the morning and I'm on my third cup of coffee. Tiptoeing, as quietly as one can dragging a concrete block on the other foot, through the house. I'm letting "them" sleep. The manchild and his friend.

In my little corner of the world, piled up under heavy quilts and wrapped in cat tails, puppy breaths, and interupted dreams, I listened as they lived. Cell phones humming, purring, rapping. Channels flicking. A cough every now and then. Heavy feet down the hall. Engines louder then softer again somewhere outside.

My son is home again.

And this house, these walls, this gate that swings open and never shuts behind you, is The Motel Six for wayward boys once again.

In the wee, wee hours, he wakes me up. Quietly, whispering love letters into my ear. "Ma, Ma.....is it o.k. if A.J. camps out here? He got thrown out of his house again....."

"mmmmmmmmm" "yes, son" I whisper to nothing.

He's already turned and taken 6 foot tall steps back down the hall.

He knows.

Behind the gate......

It was ugly. A big box tucked in the corner of the yard. One window and an old splintered door. I peeped inside and fell in love. Rickety metal shelves lined the walls. Giant penny nails were hammered everywhere. A box fan was wedged into the one window, cranked open and crooked, it’s electrical cord dangling like a dead snake hooked to the windowsill. My studio.

The lawnmower fell in love with it too. And the leaf blower, the rocky horse, the old pie safe I’ve lugged around for years. My tile collection, scavenged by the truckload, took over the floor space, stacked precariously and dangerously high. Eventually my album collection, the old wedding gown I saved for ….(What child of mine would want to wear the gown gone wrong?) , Jonah’s baseball cards, the hand-made stilts, and the leopard skin couch I scarfed from an abandoned house, all took up squatting rights there.

The boys used to sneak cigarettes and the occasional Budweiser there, adolescent legs dangling from the stacks of tile, pretending most probably to be perched on Hooter’s barstools. From the graffiti on the walls, on occasion they got lucky. In the clubhouse.

Three summers ago, after the hurricanes pealed it open ,naked to the skies, I decided I really didn’t want a studio in the corner yard. But she lived. She got all new walls, concrete this time. A beautiful new roof to match the house. And we stuffed her to the brim with coolie cups and neon floats, giant inner tubes and coolers, and called her…..well, we called her The Shed. The little dream whose time had never come.

Tonight, the measuring, marking, making good things happen for good people crew is coming over. We’ll clink and take notes and knock heads. The Angel driven trucks will roll in and gift us with drywall, insulation, lightening fixtures, a sink, maybe even air-conditioning. We’ll light the fire and toast to love and when we’re done…..

The little shed will be called home.

To a friend.

And maybe, this is all she ever dreamed of….

Spray paint...

My house is graffitied. I’m allowed to paint on the walls. Years ago, I started with a simple little scribble board in the bathroom. That’s where everyone is inclined to ink it. And it just grew. Down the halls, up the walls, carved into the tree trunks and benches, stick drawn into the wet concrete. The things people say. Thoughts. Moments. Memories. Souveniers glued in crevices. Shadows spray painted on the curtains.

Yeah, I know it doesn’t add to the property value. I had to bribe the appraiser recently with beer and stories and sunshine to find tiny un-vandalized corners for his photo shoot, and judge me on my cover and not my contents…. But, he did me good…. “My sister is a hipppie in California" he winked at me when he left…..

But it adds to why I value my house….
Why I call it home….
The painted house….

And why the people that visit here
Are free

To be themselves…..

Slammed....

It’s just a crooked screen door. Kind of Florida-like, kind of Victorian, kind of 50ish. One of those. It’s the rusty hinges that do me. The cheap haunted house sound they make. The way they pro-create their own tainted WD40, oozing like dirty glue, dripping down the door frame.

The hinges. My doorbell. My pit bull. The way I know if my next door neighbor, Maggie, is ready for coffee…sneaking over in her pajamas on Saturday morning ,hangover plastered on her face….if my Father has lumbered up the drive-way , "The beer-garden-fairy", on Friday afternoon, to have his “dearest darling daughter” chat, if my son has successfully stumbled past the benches and made it as far as the screened porch to make bodily noises and expel his Friday night at my feet. But, made it home Alive.

It’s the way I know if the mailman, who has had a crush on me since 1999, has left a package from SLB, loitering if he thinks I’m at home. The way I know if Daniel got my cut-off notices in his mailbox again, and is slipping them discretely onto the outdoor coffee table.

It’s the announcement.

Anyone that rings the real doorbell, stands on the front porch, and leans past the wasp nests, through the bouganvilla,to put their dirty little fingers on the front door button, is a stranger. God, I hate that sound. The ringy ding screams trouble. On the other side of that noise stand cops, Religious witnesses, pizza deliveries to the wrong address, men in uniforms selling fertilizer, frozen steaks, and serving subpoenas. I have furniture piled up in front of that door. Even in a fire, we’d have to run out the kitchen door, couldn’t be saved by the sound of the saving grace. We don’t do the front door. It’s the screen door that spells welcome. The screen door that is dressed in an old piece of oak, carved by Skinny , that says “This house believes…”, the screen door that I slam when I’m having a hissy fit, that I flit in and out of, creaking, squeaking, slamming…..

God, I love the noise we make

When we’re not strangers……

Sticks and Stones and all that magic.....or in other words......

Out first house was imminent. We had saved for the down payment , trading Smirnoff for ABC brand vodka on Friday nights and buying ground chuck instead of sirloin. Clink! We cheered! “We’ll buy a house” “With two cats in the yard” “And a garden” “And a fireplace for marshmellow roasts” Blah! Blah! Blah! Blah! About three week-ends into house-shopping we were fighting. What I though was adorable, he thought was a money pit. What I thought was water front, he thought was built on a retention pond… God, the man had no imagination!

So, it was perfect! The week-end of our anniversary he went boating and Kimbies and I went house shopping. Actually, we just looked at one house. Through kaleidoscope eyes. We were in awe at the designer refrigerator in the matching pantry. The “French windows throughout” were so romantic….. 13 giant oak trees danced in the sky, their petticoats shading the double lot. “This is it!”

He pulled the boat in just after dusk. His neck and cheeks red with the twelve-pack flush and a little sun! He was smiling. Better be. It was our anniversary! “Baby Cakes, I’m sorry we’re so late….there was a barge on the river and……” “Just sign here, We found the house, the perfect house, you are so gonna love it!”

And he did.

Drinking on your anniversary does strange things to you. Anything to make her happy.

The designer fridge was a rust bucket covered in wood grain contact paper. It hummed and churned and belched for a few months and then croaked. The fireplace draped in the vintage mantel was our only source of heat that winter and the “French windows throughout”, that depended on 80 year old rope pullies to move up and down, our only source of air conditioning that summer. The floors dipped, the walls creaked, the oak trees tossed 10,000 wet leaves on the tar paper roof. We had parties there, babies there, love there.

And then one day, it was over.

My second house was perfect. The Stepford Wife thing. Only there was no Stepford Husband. Skinny and I and the babies made love beads there, and peace sign wreaths out of stolen grapevines. Jonah threw up on the perfect Berber carpet, we scorched the ceiling of the perfect screened room grilling hotdogs at midnight, we packed the perfect garage full of hot wheels and seashells, driftwood and trash from the neighbor’s garbage…. "surely, we can use this for something”, we used the perfect dishwasher for our bar, stacking martini and shot glasses on the top rack, Nana’s vintage stirrers and straws in the silverware bucket, and bottles on the bottom rack, we used the perfect disposal to shred love letters and rant letters to less than perfect lovers…We hated it…..

We fertilized the yard and mowed it twice a week. Planted bulbs in the spring time. From the road, we were happy campers……..

My third house was an accident. Waiting to happen. Waiting a zillion years for just the right person, just the right vibes, just the right karma. Waiting for me.

Sometimes, when you least expect it, in places you’ve never looked before…..you find that you’ve wandered aimlessly forever…

and simply fall into the arms you’ve known all along…..

Home……



Tree fort courtesy of unknown Magpie Fairies.....
Discovered on the perfect Sunday.....

Scrapbook House

Through my daughters eyes...


I guess you could say I was eavesdropping. I was in the next room chatting away on the computer. In the kitchen, my Mom and her friend sat opposite each other sipping hot coffee and chain smoking. Conversation bouncing back and forth between them like a volley ball game. They were good at this. They had been having kitchen-table-talks for years. They knew when to interrupt, when to change the subject, when to sit quietly and just nod. They were friends. Old friends. Honest friends. Most of the morning, their words just trickled by me, nothing more than background static, like the continuous hum of the ceiling fan. I wasn’t even aware that I was listening until the words that casually tumbled out onto the kitchen table began to break my heart. “You know, sweetie, if you ever sell this old house, someone will have to spend a fortune gutting it”. My Mother laughed aloud and their continuous bantering once again became background noise.

Very quietly, I gazed around the room. Gut it? Did she mean tear down the walls? Rip out the cabinets? Take down the doors? Gut it? Peel up the floors? Yank out the windows? Pull down the lights? Yes, I thought, that is what she meant. Craning backwards now, I peered down the hallway toward the bedrooms. Thousands and thousands of pieces of broken tile danced and swirled up the hallway walls, then snaked around the corners….a meandering mosaic that crawled up my bedroom walls, around the windows and back out my door again. Deep mysterious symbols are concealed in the intricate patterns. My Mother’s art. Grouted for eternity into the walls that divide our home.

My eyes are hurting. I have a headache, right there behind the part of your heart that you see with. I want to put on sunglasses. Rose colored sunglasses. Because I do not want to see our house the way other people must see it. I want to see it the way my Mother sees it. There are nineteen cabinets in our kitchen and seven drawers. There are green doors, lavender drawers, pink cabinets, yellow shelves, blue cupboards. Every inch of every surface intricately embellished with flowers and ribbons and cascading designs that either flow perfectly or abruptly end…as if she were stopped mid sentence. Pastel Pointe shoes , painted in honor of my first solo ballet, are tangled into the quirky design. The ratty satin ribbons blending into the background.
Our kitchen door is psychedelic. As is the laundry room door. The steps are painted. The doorframes are painted. The baseboards are painted. The cobblestone porch is painted. The garden gate is painted. Some of our windows are even painted. Carefully executed in reverse, with the good side to the world. Tiny voids of paint…the center of a flower, the eye of a storm…act as peep holes. At first sight, it looks as if someone has gone mad and collaged the entire house. There are archways of a zillion shells, all priceless treasures the tide was kind enough to share with my Mother. And amidst it all, there are words buried everywhere. I suddenly remember a remark a friend of mine once made: “Be careful what you say around here, her Mom will paint it somewhere”. It’s true. It’s called Graffiti. Our entire house is like the back page of a children’s Highlights magazine…find the hidden objects. I wonder now, if she envisioned this concrete scrapbook as one big blank canvas when she first discovered the “For Sale” sign in the tattered front yard. I take a slow breath and wonder if she’ll live to fill every page with color…if she’ll still be painting when I’m forty…if my children’s first heralded birthdays will be recorded here also.

I have grown up here. I turn around and my life is splashed onto every surface. The summer at Ballet Camp. My first boyfriend. Homecoming. My Mother’s tiled, glued, painted house are proof we have survived it all. I run my fingers down the baseboard.

Storyteller house.
Scrapbook house.
Home.

On Borrowed Wings

There she is. The Angel blessing my house. She moved in first. When the walls were still sepia smoke stained plaster. When the shag carpet crawled up your ankles and made you feel like you needed to shave your legs AGAIN with every barefoot step you took. She moved into the curtainless house and lived here for weeks by her self. From the street, she was a billboard. "Stay tuned". And the neighbors did. They watched. Actually they peeked. They walked their lap dogs, made obsessive trips to their mailboxes. Waiting. Eventually we did move in. Hauled our haphazard lives into the living room in cardboard boxes, and started to unpack the past. We marked our territory like a chihuahua with "little man" syndrome. This is "our" house. This is home. Over the years, it has been called a lot of names.... "Clown house" when the little ones were in kindergarten...."House of Nudes" when my pubescent son and his friends actually noticed the tattooed mannequins.... "California hippie house"...when I applied for a second mortgage.... but really, it is just "our house" and we landed here on borrowed wings.

Peace, love, and the painted porch

Artwork (c) Singleton 2006
SOLD

Through my eyes....

First of all, it didn’t start out a porch. Or a patio. Or anything close to the great outdoors. It was a 1950’s carport. I first pulled in under it’s protective roof in 1995 and immediately banged my shiney red car doors on the columns . My first car ever was a green and green 1957 Chevy and I was sure it was much bigger than Adam’s Apple, my candy red Grand Am. Why in the heck were these columns so close together? I knew instinctively, “this will never work”. Adam’s Apple was left to scorch in the sun .

Aesthetically, it was pathetic. The concrete floor was puddled with oil stains and thick with psoriatic peeling paint. But it was instantly, the entrance to my house. My kitchen door lived here. My driveway ended here. This was my new old house. And this was the way I wanted in. I stared at it.

For a long time.

And then I spent days on my knees, scraping the veneer of old paint off the floor, and intricately painting oriental rug designs on the concrete. Wallah! It’s a patio! Tacky, and hot as hell, I was still determined to make it a welcomed place. I parked a few chairs out there, a hanging plant, and directed visitors to ENTER here.

And they did.

Because I asked them to.

Over the years, the floor was leveled, the bottom was bricked in, the windows to the world were screened. A door that squeaks like a Halloween sound track was hung, wind chimes were dangled and strung, and placed meticulously anywhere there was a breeze. The mosquitoes were banned, the lizards never took their eviction seriously and have squatter’s rights to their original domain. The columns and walls were painted. Not to match the house. Not to match the landscape. To match my world.

The furniture is painted. The doors are painted. The kitchen window is painted. Graffiti is everywhere. The words, the moments, the memories are cradled forever in a psychedelic surround-sound-style mural that engulfs the entire porch. From the street, the view is probably somewhat obnoxious. An architectural wreck piled up against the little pink and white “grandma’s house”. From under the fan, parked in my pajamas, watching the sun come up, it is home. My children grew up here…their accomplishments and passages embedded in the walls. My grandchildren scribble here. You are allowed to paint on the walls at Mimi’s house. My friends etch their presence here, autograph my life with their thoughts and takes on our world. Hurricanes are recorded here, soldiers are immortalized here. The painted porch is my welcome sign.

Anytime the light is on.