The first time I laid eyes on this house was in 1975, I believe. I was 13. My folks rocky marriage had gone south by the time I was 8 or 9. We were living in Southern California at that time, where my dad had grown up. My mom and brother and I moved back to Oregon where my mom had been raised and lived in a motel room at the Riviera Motel on State Street in Lake Oswego for the next 2 or 3 years. My aunt and her husband managed the motel. My mom worked there as a maid and we had a place to live and family nearby. Sometime during that period, my parents tried to reconcile again and we moved back to California. This time it was a town called Walnut. I don’t think we made it a whole school year before we were back living at the motel in Lake Oswego again. From Lake Oswego, we moved to Salem where my grandparents lived. My mom took a job as a cook in a tavern my grandpa owned and we lived in an apartment across the highway from the tavern. It was there that mom met her second husband, Jack. They married in the summer of 1975 and bought this house in Sherwood. This is what the house looked like so many years ago.
At that time, Sherwood was still a pretty rural community. The high school was across the street from the house, as it is now, but there were only about 1900 people who lived here rather than 19,000. There were no homes on either side of ours or in back of us. Today, we are surrounded by homes on all sides. They widened the street we live on about 20 years ago and we lost about half of the front yard.
Here’s what the house looks like today.
Mom’s second marriage lasted only about 7 years or so. She remarried a really wonderful man, Jerry, and she and Jerry lived in this home until she passed away 5 years ago. When our kids were very small, they added onto the home. Our little 1100 square foot home became 2000 square feet. A maple tree was planted in the front yard. It’s leaves torment me in the fall! And the city added the street trees along the sidewalk when the street was widened.
We spent every major holiday and countless birthday celebrations here over the years. This place is home to me. It represents stability and a sense of place. We talked and talked about whether we should buy this place. I don’t like the busy street it sits on now. Traffic in Sherwood is a nightmare. The backyard feels like a fishbowl with all the neighbors all around it. There are more projects than I can count inside and out. Yet we couldn’t let it go. It’s our turn to love it. Nurture it. Change it and decide what to keep. To have a spot for our little grandkids to run and explore. To garden. To let our dogs be dogs and run around and guard their yard. It’s home once again.