A Passion Project

A Project for the Lady of the House ~

I don't remember a lot of amazing things about my childhood.

Amazing things about my mom, though? Absolutely. Her love of everything crafty. The woman could sew. Patterns and patterns all around, materials, her beautiful sewing machine. From a small child I remember her making me outfits, like my pink dress I wore for Christmas one year. The long blue dress she made me for her and dads wedding. Yup. I was 10 when they married.

One outfit for me, (though I don't actually remember what it looked like, only what the fabric looked like) and a matching outfit for the boy next door, so we could look cute together going to the movie? Mom, what were you and boy next door mom even thinking?? Perhaps she was in her "matchmaking era". Clothes for my dolls. As I got older, Christmas tree decorations, pot holders, all the things I would love as I started my own home. She also loved embroidery, baking (she could bake a mean apple pie, thank you for passing that on to me!). Ceramics. I still have a few pieces she made. Gardening was also a love, in her tiny little front flower bed. Dad helped her a lot with that I remember. I'm sure she had a green thumb, wishing she'd also passed that on to me. Maybe it's just not my time for that yet?

But I do also remember some strange, kind of quirky things, like, answering the phone or the door and the salesman asking to speak to the "lady of the house". What a strange thing to remember. I even remember seeing my mom and dad sitting at the table with said salesman (stranger), trying to sell them things. Window coverings, vacuum cleaners, pots and pans, all of it. And dad bringing out his trusty ol' camera to take pictures. The man thought of everything. I mean, you can never be too careful, right?

Eventually, the pots and pans, the vacuum, and all the other things that mom would have acquired over these sit down sales calls, got used less and less by her, and more by my dad. The memories of her sleeping a lot, suffering with constant headaches, and constant hand tingling, are now reminding me how terrified I was when her MS diagnosis came. After several doctor appointments she finally had an answer, and just as quickly it seemed, she was in a wheelchair. But, what a creative life she lived until then. If I am to get through this post without tears, that's what it boils down to. She loved all things crafty and working with her hands. What beautiful hands she had. She is the reason for this project.

I love you mom.

Which brings me to my first subject.

You may remember the beautiful Charity, from THIS post and we also did a second session, which you'll find HERE. We had spoken about doing a third, and it would have taken place in and around her home, but as you will see from the following story, the session really did happen as it was meant to. It's a great, lengthy read, but I didn't want to edit any of it out because it is all so essential to her quest for feeling at "home".

A bit of backstory to catch you up . . . .

"This place looks as tired as I feel."

That’s what I remember thinking when I had first pulled up to the house and waited for my realtor to meet me. I was still recovering from the bilateral mastectomy surgery that had hit me pretty hard both physically and mentally a month before. I had recently received confirmation that the margins were clear in the tissue samples from the surgery they had sent in for testing. That meant that I was technically cancer-free and I was elated yet still exhausted. I had 14 more biological treatments that I had finish but I was feeling more than ready to live on my own again.

When I had been diagnosed with triple positive, stage 2b, grade 3 breast cancer about 7 months before I parked in front of this house in a village I’d never been to before, my best friend and I decided that I would move in with her family whilst going through the initial phases

of chemo and surgery. We didn’t know how I was going to fare through the process given that I had some considerable health issues I had been managing before this newest bombshell and I lived alone. About two months later, I sold my house, moved in, and started my first

chemotherapy treatment. I’m eternally grateful that she opened her home to me. It did end up being quite a chaotic time for all of us and, despite my deep love for her, I was ready to have my own home again.

To my complete dismay, I had been priced out of the market in the 5.5 months that I had been living with her and you could hardly get a showing before it was snapped off the market. I looked at properties that I was positive held the gateway directly to the pits of hell. There were rooms with mould growing up the walls and rooms we wouldn’t even go into; my realtor would stick her hand in with her phone and snap a pic so we could see what it looked like. Downright unholy! I was reasonably certain that we were going to end up stumbling across a gruesome crime scene and, much to my abject horror, these tear-down pieces of garbage were all at the top end of my budget. It was time to start widening my search area. After many failed “look sees” and an ill-advised offer on one that catastrophically failed the inspection, I eventually found a place that matched almost all my criteria and here I sat, hoping it wasn’t going to be another fail.

The first thing that hit me when we walked in was the musty “old house” smell. I made a comment and was starting to feel the now-familiar sense of disappointment but kept going through the house. I was looking for reasons that this one could work and so I started finding them.

Tall walls curved gracefully into the ceiling, decorative archways welcomed me into each room of the main space, a built-in bookshelf greeted me at the front door, heck, there was even little alcoves built into the wall in the entry hallway and on the fireplace mantle. The bones were solid, the roof was good, the basement although undeveloped was a walk-out. The bathroom didn’t even come close to resembling a truck stop toilet like so many I had seen recently in the other properties. It was actually pretty darn nice! The windows were mostly newish and, the biggest reason I started cheering on the inside, it was firmly in my price range. I made the house a deal: I’ll take very good care of you if you choose me to be your new owner. An offer was submitted, haggling back and forth ensued, a deal was made and to my utter delight I was a home owner again.

As I started talking to my new neighbours, I learned a lot about the history of my new house and I could really relate to the scars it had amassed over its lifetime. This house had long been a rental and we know those are rarely taken care of, let alone with love. It had at one point been abandoned for five years. That’s when the furnace died thereby causing the hot water tank to freeze along with all the other pipes in the house which then led to said pipes bursting and flooding the basement during spring thaw. It had been fully developed at one point but the person that bought it after the abandonment had to tear it all out to deal with the atrocities that result from a flood that sits there for an unknown amount of time. That owner didn’t last too long as far as my understanding goes. There was someone living here doing a rent-to-own deal but the rent never was applied to the mortgage and it ended up going into foreclosure. Windows were broken out. Feral cats held all their 70’s key parties here. The house was in a dilapidated state when the next owner came in. He was planning on using it as a two-suite rental so had made some repairs -some work on the wraparound deck to make it safe again and put in a lovely driveway- then decided to offload it instead. This is where yours truly comes on-scene. I also learned that one of the renters years ago had decided this house should be his final resting place and ended his life here. I don’t know much more than that as no one wants to tell me details. I don’t know if it was violent but I know he was a heavy smoker as I would get whiffs of cigarettes my first number of months living here. Now, I don’t smoke and neither does my dog, Walter, and given that it was the dead of winter, no windows were open. I had a chat

with the One-I-Couldn’t-See about this being a strictly non-smoking house then proceeded to smudge it. It’s been pretty good on the Western Front since then.

There are many things they tell you about going through cancer treatment during the process. What they don’t really go into are the effects long term on how it’s going to change you. How it’s going to change your outlook, your relationships, how you relate to yourself and the world around you. I was truly elated to be in this home despite it still being run down. I mean, I wasn’t exactly in a state of excellence myself. We were quite the pair but we are both VERY resilient and that is a quality place to start from. It’s a horrible state of existence to not feel comfortable in the world but it’s a special kind of torture to not feel safe in your own body. My right breast literally tried to kill me. The call was actually coming from inside the house and I was ill-equipped to do more than operate in survival mode.

I had to turtle after the sheer mayhem that the year before had felt like. I was grateful to be in a tiny village where only one person knew me, where I didn’t get visitors. A place where I could get through the 14 treatments, come home, stare at my ceiling, ugly cry, and try to process this spiritual and psychological No-Man’s Land that I was traversing. Moving through the liminal space of who I used to be but no longer was and who I’m going to be but not yet are took me some years of quiet -borderline isolation- and I’m still not entirely through it. What I found to be extraordinarily healing was channeling the maelstrom of emotions into fixing and upgrading

my home.

When that first Spring finally arrived, I moved into the sunshine and started digging. This house had been left with landscaping most accurately described as tragic. There were very large Manitoba maple tree shoots everywhere that I had to hand dig out. There were piles almost as big as me of fill and literal garbage left all over the property. I wanted the home that had cradled me for the last 5 months to start looking like a place that was loved. I had made it a promise and it was time to start living up to that. I was out there every day I could be, making my outdoor space beautiful. My trusty, old shovel and I dug out my entire front yard to plant a hedge and so many perennials. I dug out the space to put in in a dry creek bed and hauled a half full 5-gallon pail of rocks off my driveway, up the hill 77 times, to fill it. I dug out most of my back yard and a large area around the aforementioned lovely driveway to put more perennials. I collected large rocks to border the tiered flowerbeds from drives I would take in the country. Three tick bites, many bruises and sore muscles later and it was well on its way to be a floral haven. I finished my final treatment towards the end of that August, rang the bell and promptly

adopted a second dog. Life was starting to feel like inner peace was tangible and not just a distant hope.

When the season started to turn, I had another surgery to remove the stretchers from my chest and had implants put in. There was some recovery time that forced me to slow down so not much was done on the inside of the house.

I ended up having a third surgery to do some corrections a few months later, more healing time, more curling up in my cozy home. Once I came through that final surgery, I started the first round of kitchen “improvements” that I subsequently decided I actually hated so I am currently doing round two and hoping beyond hope that it sticks. I like to think that I’ve been a stellar promise-keeper to my home in the not-quite three years that I’ve lived here. Not to draw too straight of a line but I feel that the more I do that for House, the better I do it for the promises I made to myself. One project seems to always lead into the next and every successful completion reminds me how far I’ve come in my journey. Thus far, I’ve ripped out old laminate flooring -remember that musty smell? That’s where it was coming from- and refinished the hidden gem that was the hardwood underneath.

I've laid luxury vinyl plank in the areas that did not have gorgeous hardwood underneath. I’ve torn down a wall to create more lighting in my stairs to the basement which led to me finishing my basement. Shout out to YouTube videos for teaching me how to frame, build a bulkhead, hang drywall, mud & tape, lay glue-down vinyl plank flooring, properly paint, do some trim work then build my own wainscoting only for me to look around -in a state of slight disbelief that I did this- admire my work, give myself an “Atta girl” then start filling it all up with broken down furniture because I decided that I would enjoy refinishing/restoring/upcycling/decorating old furniture despite never having done it before. As is my modus operandi, I charged ahead and just started. I was right… I absolutely love it!

My home is my favourite place in the entire world. It’s where I can sing silly songs to my dogs, it’s where I can knit or work on jigsaw puzzles and cry watching reruns of shows that aren’t sad but make me emotional anyway. It’s my space to learn, explore who I am now as an ongoing work-in-progress, delve into new passions, think, grow and process. I don’t have 5-star days every day but it’s where I am safe to feel all the feelings, where I can exist without being on guard.

Home is where I have been rebuilding myself from the foundations out at the same time that I’m fixing my house. I have been given the gift of time and was blessed enough to find the home that allowed me the place to heal during the darkest of hours. I’m determined not to

squander even a moment of it. Home is where I live with deep gratitude and unfettered joy.

Now, it’s time to get back to my kitchen reno so I can joyfully experience dishes in cupboards instead of stacked akimbo in my spare room.

~Charity Carleton

I am looking for more of you, to share your love for all things "home".

I'm stuck in a loop of "just getting by" in my home. I don't love it. And I'm not sure where to start to get to the "I love my home and everything it means to me". To be honest, in 10 years I will be the age my mom was when she died. I'm feeling my mortality big time. So I feel like I have a good 10 years to work on getting to the point where I love my home and everything in it. Please join me in celebrating the love you have for YOUR home. Share what makes it special to you. What does it do for your soul? I want this project to highlight the ups and downs, not just the highlights. Highlights are for social media. This space is for the real you.

I am not entirely sure yet how far I will take this project, but I'm hoping the word "volumes" comes into play, whether that means we're speaking volumes about our homes, or the fact that I will publish volumes of softcover coffee table magazines. So I am putting it out there. I want to be taken back in time with this project. I want to feel like I could be conversing with my own mom, had she survived long enough to take part in this.

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