(This is a post I wrote over several days in the last week or two before Jude, the boys and I moved from old house on Elliott Avenue to our new house on Linden Avenue).
In many ways, this is the one blog post I never thought I would write.
A little more than 12 years ago, a month or two shy of our wedding, Jude and I bought our house at 1906 Elliott Avenue, just south of downtown Nashville. Because she's a good Catholic girl, Jude moved in first and I didn't join her until after we were married. Jude sold her house in East Nashville and I sold my house in Franklin. Having never lived outside of Williamson County ("God's Country" I had always called it), it was with some trepidation that I moved into what my closest friends not so affectionately described as "the 'Hood."
Truth be told, in those days - the salad days of our marriage - our neighborhood was in many ways "the 'Hood." Jude's bicycle was stolen off our back porch the first week after we moved into our house. Someone stole a potted plant off our front porch the weekend of our wedding. When the original chain link fence was removed and our back yard was without a fence for one day while the posts for our privacy fence were being set, someone unchained my lawnmower from the back porch and stole it.
Worst of all, over the second or third Easter weekend there, someone cut and stole from out garden in the front yard the beautiful tulips Jude had planted the year before. Enraged, I went to Office Depot and bought poster board and magic markers. I made a large sign and stuck it in the garden in our front yard, right next to the sidewalk. It said, "Happy Easter to the jackass who stole our tulips!" The Easter Sunday churchgoers at Mt. Gilled Baptist Church, across the street, just stared at the sign in silence as they got our of their cars to walk into church.
The large windows in the front room of the house are original (probably 85 or 90 years old). They have no screens and we never had any window treatments installed, because we couldn't find anything that looked good to us. Plus, we loved the look of the old fashioned, smoky glass and the pulleys used to raise and lower the windows. There are no screens on the windows, so the cats (oh, man, those three damned cats - Punk (RIP), NC and Mini-T) would hop up and outside, then hop up and come back inside at will on nice fall or spring days.
One fall day, long before J.P. was born, Jude and I were watching a UT-Florida football game in the den, with the windows open, when Jude suddenly shrieked. NC had jumped up into the window from outside, then jumped onto the floor of the den, with a small garter snake in her mouth. Jude screamed (she's terrified of all snakes) and I laughed hysterically. I took the snake outside and let it go in the tall, thick hedge row that separated our front yard from "Neighbor Jamie's" front yard (although this was probably before he moved in next door).
Anyway, in the early days after we moved into the house, it seemed to me that every person who walked by our house was looking directly into our den. It was as weird feeling. At night, especially, when we were watching television, I would stand up and look outside every time someone walked by our house on the sidewalk or a car drove by more slowly than normal. I quickly realized I wasn't living in suburbia in Williamson County anymore.
And somehow, someway, that's what I grew to love about our house and neighborhood more than anything. It wasn't Williamson County, far from it. It seemed more real. A little dangerous, yes, but more alive.
Initially, it was a little unsettling to me to me out in the neighborhood at night. Hard to believe, I know, because now it's nothing for me to go for a run or walk to Bongo Java or Edley's after the boys are in bed. That wasn't the case in the early days. I can recall being a little uncomfortable going for my first run or two at night. I distinctly remember feeling a little nervous walking down Acklen Avenue, toward home, after a run not too long after I joined Jude in the house after we were married.
Fast forward to the two or three months after Joe was born, when to keep with "the schedule," I would take him for a walk at 9 or 9:30 p.m., while Jude napped before feeding him again at 11 p.m. Joe and I routinely strolled to Boulevard on Belmont Boulevard, where a I had a glass or two of wine and read books on my Kindle. Sometimes, as we strolled back home, I laughed to myself as I crossed 12th Avenue, near 11 p.m. I found it funny that if someone had told me, 20 years ago, that I would be 44 years old, strolling a sleeping infant across 12th Avenue near downtown Nashville, I would have said they were insane.
Man plans, God laughs, right? Right.
One night several years ago as I was walking down Caldwell avenue, returning home with coffee from Bongo Java after ending a run there, I sensed someone walking behind me. I turned around, started, and saw a fit, well dressed, middle aged black man a few feet away. We exchanged greetings, struck up a conversation, and I learned his name was Alan McCrary and he lived around the corner from me on Acklen Avenue in a house his family had owned for decades. I also learned he was a Los Angeles Laker fan, as am I, and since that night we have had many, many conversations about NBA basketball, music, family and life (his and mine).
I subsequently did some legal work for Alan and in thanks, he gave me a gospel CD his sisters had self-released. I planned to listen to to it once, just to be nice, then throw it way, because in Nashville, everyone has a CD. Unbeknownst to me, Alan's father was one of the original Fairfield Four, a world renowned gospel group. Suffice to say, the McCrary Sisters' CD - their first one - was amazing. I was blown away by it, and I no nothing about gospel music. J.P. and I absolutely wore it out listening to it in my truck on the way to school, running errands, etc. J.P.'s first "concert" was a McCrary Sisters' show at 3rd and Lindsley, where he was by far the youngest person in attendance. One of Alan's sisters dedicated a song (J.P.'s favorite on the CD) to him and he was thrilled. We also saw Alan perform a jaw dropping rendition of Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On?"
Only in Nashville, and only in my neighborhood in Nashville, could something like this originate from a chance meeting on a walk home at night from Bongo Java after a run. At least, that's how it seems to me. That chance meeting led to a relationship with someone and memories I'll treasure forever.
Other than our boys, the greatest gift Jude has given me during out time together has been leading me down a path that ended in a place totally and completely out of my comfort zone. Leaving the confines of Williamson County "bubble" to live in "the 'Hood" is probably the best example of that. My life has been enriched in so many ways, large and small, by living in our house on Elliott Avenue and the surrounding neighborhood. I have met people and formed friendships that I hope will last a lifetime, all because we decided to take a chance and buy this house in 2003, much to the chagrin of many of our friends and family.
In the early days, we got a lot of mail fro Jessie and Amy Plaster, the people who owned the house before us and renovated it. On several occasions when we met someone from the neighborhood for the first time, they would look at us wistfully, nod their heads, and say something like "you bought Jessie and Amy's house. They're so great." It got to be a joke to Jude and me, since it happened so often. We were just Jude and Phil, the slackers that bought Jessie and Amy's house.
Well, a funny thing happened over the last 12+ years. In many ways, Jude and I became Jessie and Amy Plaster, or so it seems, as our lives became woven into the fabric of the neighborhood. J.P and Joe played a large part in that, for sure. After all, babies are a great conversation starter and conversation piece. Many times as I strolled J.P., then later Joe, through the neighborhood, I stopped to talk to a neighbor I hadn't met yet, who wanted to take a peek inside the stroller (the magic City Elite, by Baby Jogger, that I've written about many times). Now, as our departure is imminent, those same neighbors who extolled the virtues of Jessie and Amy Plaster when we moved into the house look at us, shake their heads sadly, and tell us they wish we weren't leaving. On many levels, I feel the same way.
A quick aside about Jessie and Amy Plaster is in order. When we initially moved into the house, we noticed a black and white cat sitting on the window sill, outside, staring at us as we watched television in the den. When we walked into the kitchen to make dinner, the same cat appeared like an apparition in the kitchen window, staring balefully inside at us. Downstairs bedroom? Same thing. The black and white cat appeared in that window, as well. We were puzzled, until I mentioned to Jude that the cat looked a lot like a black and white cat we had seen sleeping in a closet in the house when we looked at it before buying it. We called our realtor, Reid, and he confirmed that Jessie and Amy Plaster, those paragons of neighborhood virtue, moved to North Carolina and left their cat at the house. I guess it was their housewarming gift to us.
I'm tempted to leave NC at the house for the new owner, but of course, I can't do that. She'll travel to our new house on Linden Avenue, where she will undoubtedly pee on the floor, just as she has done for more than a decade at our house on Elliott Avenue. I could, and probably should, write a separate post about NC, because she truly has lived nine lives since we took her in as part of our family. Another time, perhaps.
It's difficult to recall with any sense of detail our lives at the Elliott Avenue house before the boys were born. For me, it's a collage of out of town travel for ultimate frisbee tournaments and Tennessee football games, tailgating for Titans' games, the occasional ultimate frisbee party (the Valentine's Day Soup Party, the Old School Ultimate Frisbee Party and the Ultimate Frisbee Christmas party come to mind), a succession of neighborhood boys mowing our grass (Anthony and Cameron), me cooking a lot for Jude, softball games in the City and Law leagues, countless runs through the neighborhood and really, just living a no pressure, freedom filled life without children.
It didn't take long for me to fall in love with "city life," in part because it was different from the life of so many of my friends were living, and different from the life I had previously lived. On a certain level, I enjoyed traveling down a different path by living in the 'hood, where life had a little bit of grittiness to it. For me, it was fun to be little different.
Especially in the early days, it wasn't unusual to hear what I quickly grew to recognize as gunshots nearby, followed by the police helicopter flying over our block searching for a suspect. Jude and I returned home from a Predators' game one night and saw several police cars, an ambulance and a couple of fire trucks at the corner in the intersection of Elliott Avenue and Benton Avenue. We later learned a man had been shot inside a van in a drug deal gone bad, after which he was dumped in the street in front of our neighbors' house. Evidently, he staggered up to their front porch and banged on the front door, desperately seeking help as he bled profusely from a gunshot wound to his leg.
One spring afternoon 6 or 7 years ago, there was a shooting during a domestic disturbance at a house on Acklen Avenue, maybe a tenth of a mile away from our house. A teenage girl was taken to Vanderbilt with a gunshot wound. Fortunately, she wasn't seriously injured.
Another evening, 2 or 3 years ago, I returned home from work one summer evening to see several police cars and a television news truck parked at the intersection of Wedgewood Avenue and Acklen Avenue. Onlookers were milling around, behind a large white sheet that had been erected. I talked to a neighbor and learned a man had been shot during a drug deal in the housing project on 12th Avenue. The wounded man had driven his car to the parking lot Hubcap Annie's on Wedgwood Avenue (a Nashville "institution" since my youth, recently closed), where he apparently died.
Another night, after we were in bed, I was awakened by the sound of the police helicopter seemingly hovering directly over our house. When I called the non-emergency telephone number of the Metro Police Department to find out what was going on, I was told the police were looking for a man who had been involved in a armed robbery and later was spotted walking through the neighborhood with no shirt on, carrying a rifle.
Yep, that was my 'hood, at least in the early years. Gritty, a little dangerous and with a definite edge to it.
Sure, it wasn't Baltimore or New Orleans, but this was "the city" for me. Scary and a little intimidating to me at first, but I grew to love it. It became home. I learned to recognize the sound of gunshots and to distinguish them form the sound of fireworks in June and July. It was part of the soundtrack of living in the 'hood. At one point, I remarked to Jude, a bit ruefully, that I wasn't sure what was more concerning - that I was living in a neighborhood where I could hear gunshots on a regular basis or that hearing gunshots didn't bother me anymore.
Speaking of fireworks, one of the pleasant discoveries we made about our house after we moved in was that we could see them over the tops of the trees in our backyard from Greer Stadium on Friday and Saturday nights during the spring and summer when the Sounds finished home games with a fireworks display. We could see and hear them, actually. Many times, after J.P. was born, he would sit in Jude's lap and look out her window at the fireworks, smiling sleepily the whole time.
Also, when the stock cars were racing at Fairgrounds Speedway, if the wind was blowing just right, it sounded like the stock cars were racing in a continuous loop around our front and back yards. With the windows closed. It was loud, and I loved it. It was just part of living in the city.
Over the years we lived in our house on Elliott Avenue, we watched our next door neighbors' son, Greg, grow from a boy into a young man, seemingly overnight. When when we moved in, Greg was 11 or 12 years old. He progressed from incessantly practicing lacrosse in the back yard ("thwack! thwack! thwack!") to hosting parties and shooting fireworks with friends in the back yard when his parents were out of town. On two or three occasions, I walked next door, let myself in with my key, and asked Greg and his friends to tone it down during a party. I also helped Greg out on a couple of occasions with traffic tickets. And now, he's grown up, graduated from college and off to make his way in the world.
Of course, when J.P. was born, it changed everything. Overnight, our house became a home, if that makes sense. I vividly recall Jude, seven or eight months pregnant, painting navy blue stars on the light green ceiling of the nursery (J.P.'s room) with a stencil she had ordered on-line (the stars are still there, actually). So many nights - almost every night - I checked on J.P. when I went to bed (first in his crib, then in his converted toddler bed, now in his single bed) and said a silent prayer as I stood over him sleeping peacefully before I went to bed. I remember setting him down in his infant carrier, in the middle of the den floor when we brought him home from the hospital for the first time. I was terrified. Suddenly, our house had become a home that was filled with baby bottles, nipples, diapers, toys (lots of toys), baby clothes, etc. And I had grown up, or so it seemed.
Many mornings I woke up to bright sunlight streaming through the line of windows down one wall of our bedroom and looked over at Jude, as she breast fed J.P., and later, Joe. There was something special, almost magical, about the natural light in the master bedroom in the mornings. Some of the best photographs I have ever taken were taken of Jude and the boys in our master bedroom, smiling in the morning sunlight.
I met our friend, Anne Marie (and her daughter, Ayden) while I was strolling with J.P. in the neighborhood one weekend afternoon. She was strolling with Ayden, we struck up a conversation and a family friendship was born. We were saddened when Anne Marie, Rob and Ayden moved into the suburbs because we knew it wouldn't be the same, and it wasn't. We lost touch with them, other than the occasional telephone call. The friendship we forged in the 'hood, albeit brief in the scheme of things, was special.
J.P. crawled for the first time on a blanket with me on a spring Sunday afternoon in our front yard, underneath out stately 75 + year old Maple tree. I frantically telephoned Jude on my cell phone and she poked her head outside on the upstairs porch, overlooking the front yard, to watch him crawl. We laughed together at the joy of it all. I was, and am, in awe of the very idea of J.P. and the fact that God had blessed us with a healthy, active son. J.P.
J.P. walked for the first time, wearing his "BASKETBALL" t-shit, on the small deck in our back yard. He tottered diagonally across the deck, from Jude to me and back again, hands raised above his head staggering like a drunken sailor. He smiled the entire time and our hearts soared as we bore witness to such an amazing moment.
Sadly, I sobbed on J.P.'s shoulder in the nursery when he was six months old, as I held him close, after learning my close friend Benton's daughter, Elizabeth, had died. I remember thinking he was supposed to cry on my shoulder, not the other way around. That Saturday morning, though, J.P. comforted me - comforted my soul, really - in a way that's hard to put into words. I clung to him desperately as I cried and cried.
There was a time in J.P.'s young life when I wasn't sure if he was going to be a big sports fan, like his old man. When he was three years old, other than quilt on is wall that had a baseball and bat on it, there were no indications the room belonged to a boy who loved sports. I was okay with that (at least I think I was), because he loved music and I knew we would find other areas of common interests. However, when J.P. turned four, it was like someone flipped the sports switch. By the time he turned five, every inch of the wall above his bed was covered in sports posters - Nashville Predators, Belmont basketball, Vanderbilt basketball, baseball and football, Tennessee Titans. It was crazy how quickly he got bitten by the sports bug.
As we were decluttering and getting our house ready to sell, Jude took down all of the sports posters. It's so strange, now, to look at the bank wall above his bed, where all of his sports posters had hung.
And then, along came Joe.
Our house - our home, actually - descended into a constant state of controlled chaos the day we walked in from the hospital and I set the infant carrier down in the same spot in the den where I had set J.P. down, almost four years earlier. One thing hadn't changed - I was terrified, again. Whereas Jude and I had managed to settle into a comfortable routine with J.P. as he grew from an infant into a toddler, that routine and any sense of normalcy evaporated the minute I walked in the front door with Joe. At that point, our lives became about day to day survival. Truth be told, having two boys four years of age or under kicked our asses.
Jude and I debated about where to set up Joe's nursery. I suggested Jude and I move the master bedroom downstairs into the guest room and turn the playroom into the nursery. It made perfect sense to me. Jude was understandably concerned about leaving J.P. upstairs by himself at night (at age four) and what type of message that might send to him. She advocated turning the upstairs "nook" into a nursery. That, of course, made no sense to me at the time, but that's what we did and it worked out fine. It was kind of nice to have all of us sleeping upstairs, especially in the early days of adjusting to having two boys in the house. Selfishly, it was nice for me to have the entire downstairs to myself at night, after everyone else went to bed. I was able to get a late run in and wander around downstairs, often in and out onto he front porch, to my heart's content while everyone else was sleeping upstairs.
The first night Joe was home from the hospital and spent the night in our house, J.P. caught some kind of stomach virus and vomited repeatedly. Joe cried most of the night. Bleary eyed and tired, I changed J.P.'s sheets three times after he threw up on them. I distinctly remember thinking to myself, "What in the hell have we done? We can't handle two children. Not at out age." Dr. Godfrey, the boys' pediatrician, laughed and laughed when we recounted to him our first night at home with both of the boys. It's a lot funnier now than it was that night, that's for sure.
With an infant and a four year old, and Jude and me over the age of 40, the best we could do was try to make it from one day to the next. As my law partner, Chas, remarked one day at work, Jude and I had returned to "baby jail." We had been paroled, as J.P. grew into a toddler and became more self-sufficient, but we'd violated the terms of our parole by having another baby, as a result of which we were sent back to "baby jail." At times, if felt like jail.
This was particularly true when Joe was diagnosed with RSV at six or seven months of age. For at least a month, maybe longer, he had difficulty breathing at night and couldn't sleep longer than 30-45 minutes at a time. Jude slept upstairs and kept Joe the first half of the night. I slept downstairs and kept him the second half of the night. Because he really couldn't sleep laying down, I would place him in the City Elite stroller and he would sleep fitfully. When he woke up and cried, which occurred throughout the night, I got out of the guest bed and pushed the stroller around the downstairs of our relatively small house. I traced and retraced my route into the hall, into the dining room, into the den and back again, over and over. I felt scared, depressed, helpless and hopeless as I "slept walked" with Joe every night. Perhaps because of the prolonged sleep deprivation, it was a nightmarish, hellish time in our lives. Fortunately, that passed, as all things do.
In many ways, the next three years passed in a blur, as Jude and I tried to adjust to having two active, growing boys in the house. I would be lying if I said it was always easy, because it wasn't. It was damn hard. Our beloved nanny, friend and the fifth member of our immediate family, "Uncle" Carley, had a major health issue during that time period. We were devastated because she literally is a part of our family. Our love for her runs as deeply as it does for any family member. Thankfully, she recovered and continued to care for Joe and, on occasion, J.P.. Then, as on many occasions, we relied on Jude's parents, Jane and Jimdad, and my mother, Jane, to help us with the boys as we tried to balance work, J.P.'s growing list of activities and our home life.
At some point in time, or maybe slowly over time, we realized that this house, our craftsman home on Elliott Avenue, isn't big enough for the four of us, especially if we want to have out of town guest or if the boys want to have sleepovers. We started looking at houses. Lots and lots of houses. It became an obsession over the last year and a half. I laid in bed many nights, iPad in hand, looking at hundreds of houses on Zillow.com. I laughed and remarked that some men looked at pornography late at night. I, on the other hand, looked at real estate.
Somewhere along the line, this house we loved so much when we bought it became a bit of an albatross, especially for Jude. And that made me sad. Part of it was our fault, as we deferred maintenance and never performed much need renovations to the master bedroom or kitchen. For 12+ years, Jude and I have walked downstairs to take a shower each morning, then walked back upstairs in a towel to get dressed. Low maintenance? Sure. Or maybe procrastinators. Jude became ever more desperate to find a house that fits our family's needs, which is understandable. I resisted somewhat, alternating between want to find a new house and wanting to renovate this house.
And when it finally happened, it happened really fast. We looked at house on Linden Avenue, maybe a half mile from our house on Elliott Avenue, fell in love with it and made an offer a day later. Suddenly, we had a contract to purchase a new house and it was time to think about selling our house. To get our house ready to be sold, we repainted it, inside and outside, and replaced the front sidewalk and stairs. A few weeks ago, as he stood on our new sidewalk, J.P. said to me, "Dad, we should have fixed our sidewalk a long time ago." I nodded ruefully, silently agreeing with him. We put a "For Sale" sign in our yard on a Monday morning and had a signed contract to sell it by Tuesday afternoon, before it ever went on the market. That's how hot the real estate market in Nashville is right now.
It happened that fast. Friday, May 15, 2015, we closed the sale of our house. As part of the deal, we retained possession for two weeks, scheduling our move for May 30, 2015.
Now, as I sit her on the third to last night in our house, I'm heartbroken. How do I say goodbye to a house that has loved and protected by family for 12+ years? How do I say goodbye to the front and back yards where my boys learned to walk, where they learned to hit and throw a baseball, to kick a soccer ball? How do I say goodbye to the front porch I've sat on so many nights, beer in hand, cooling down after a run, listening to the comforting sounds of the city. How do I say goodbye to my maple tree, the tree that has shaded our front yard, that our boys have played under, that has given us 30+ bags of leaves year after year for our Leaf Party. God, I love that tree.
I've thought about this a lot, trying to make sense of why I am so sad and reluctant to leave this house. I think it has something to do with saying goodbye to such and important and memorable time in my life. Looking back, the 12+ years I spent in this house will probably be the best years of my life. The prime of my life, really, from my mid-30's to my late 40's. It's hard to separate, I think, my love for this house from my love for this period of time in my life. As I leave, it seems like I am leaving behind my 40's, the last vestiges of youthful middle age, never to return. Maybe, just maybe, what I really want is for this time in my life never to end. But it has.
Maybe I want my young boys to stay young boys, living relatively uncomplicated lives. Maybe I want Jude and me to stay young and healthy. Maybe I want city life to still seem new and exciting to me. Maybe I want my family and friends to stay healthy. Maybe I just want things to be like they were, always. But that's not possible. I know that.
Goodbye house. Goodbye to the rollicking, lovely, interesting, exciting life we built in this house.
