It's What We'Ve Done -- Together
We launched our search for choice antiques in 1972, with lofty plans to resurrect a huge Victorian house,
Doing a combination restoration and upgrading, unprepared for what would come along to quickly douse
The mutually raging fires that were blazing in our hearts. Norma Jean got pregnant and our dream was put on hold,
And by the time the twins were born - and budget reassessed - the 1880s house we’d planned to renovate -- had sold.
Not prepared to let our plan to save a great old house fade away forever, we kept snagging odds and ends -
If and when some extra funds would surface now and then - while all the while, disappearing - just around the bends,
Every chance we’d conjure up - to fin’ly buy a home - vaporized before our eyes...slipped beyond our reach...
And me and Norma’d fight to help each other - not give up - by taking turns reciting what’s become a common speech!
Either she or I would say -- “Someday it will happen! Some old musty mansion, somewhere close, will come along,
And even with the income that we’re living on today, something fairly rough - that we can purchase for a song -
“Will eventually surface, and we’ll somehow find the funds needed to restore it. It’s a dream that must come true,
And one that certainly will, my dear. The fact is...as you know...dreams like ours can take awhile, but very often do.”
Today we have a photo album filled with gorgeous pictures taken when we’d travel for - now - thirty-seven years,
And every time we take it out to warmly reminisce...despite we love them, every one, they tend to foster tears.
Our home is cluttered wall to wall with things you rarely see decorating modern ones – some fairly fancy stuff -
But...even though they help to quell the pain of striking out...having them -- without the house to match -- is not enough.
We’ve fin’y thrown the towel in on - ‘fixing up a Vicky’ - ‘cause everything we find these days is much too far away,
And if we hint at moving out of state to - ‘do our thing’, both our folks and all our fam’ly plead with us to stay!
Still, we’ll keep on dreaming, while we settle for the photos, comfortably surrounded by the ancient things we own,
Realizing, in the end, it’s what we’ve done together that’s made our 1950s house a wonderfully happy home.
Check out 4 Audio CDs of my verse (samples on YouTube an Ebay), and several various books at: writerofbooks.com - or you're welcome to email me to order anything at - mark@writerofbooks.com.
Stay safe,
Mark
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