want to see where I used to live, and love?

When my mom died and left me her fortune, it enabled us to do some things that we hadn’t been able to do in the past.
Like buy more/different/larger property.

And we bought a great new space for the clinic and college, and I bought a rental home that could be used almost like a B&B for students who came from away and were studying with us.

And we bought my home.

My ultimate home. The home that was the love of my life.
The home that, when Rudi first suggested we consider selling it to move to the Bahamas, caused me to go into a one-year state of shock, depression, overwhelm, grief, loss…

But at the end of the year I realized it was for the best. Meghan had already gone her way in life, Kelsey was finishing up her Culinary Management degree and would soon be making her way.

And with them gone, the burden of looking after the horses, cutting and hauling and stacking firewood, working with the forest manager for the property, clearing the 7km of riding trails, plowing and shovelling snow, mowing mowing mowing (which was half of my life)… And with the dream of Hope Town in my eyes… I began to let go.

Just a little. We still bought two houses before I fully let go, and before Kelsey graduated. One was on the river, was all glass on the back and we had a dock and powerboat and… I didn’t love it. I think I was still stuck in the other place. And the last house was really nice, on a golf course, it felt much lighter, I was letting go better…

But when you ask about MY house – this was it. This was my house. This was my home. Where I imagined the girls having their weddings, Meghan opening a riding school, Kelsey opening a restaurant nearby, the grandchildren visiting and learning to ride the horses.

From the moment you turned into the 1200′ driveway (yeah, that had to be plowed, but here I am being romantic at the moment) of that 120 acres, you let out a great, big exhale. Slowed down the car and took it all in as you made your way through the trees, the daffodil and narcissus that Rudi had naturalized.

It had a wonderful family entrance/mud room, huge. A washroom and a laundry room off that side of the house – the laundry room twice the size of my bedroom when I was growing up. The kitchen, informal dining room, family room with a massive open limestone fireplace (that soon held a wood stove), the screened porch (Rudi built me for one birthday) and patio and pool and – Rudi’s gardens. He is a phenomenal gardener and landscaper.

A three-car garage, before we had three or four cars (although we did manage to have two cars and always a truck, because for that property you needed a truck. For horses you needed a truck) had above it a massive space, a gorgeous art studio with a wall of glass overlooking that great Weeping Willow tree between the house and the limestone-walled garden and potting shed. Which almost held chickens, until I learned we’d have to eat them at the end. We made that huge area into one of our clinics, so we wouldn’t have to leave that beautiful property.

The antique silo finished off that side of the house. It was the entrance to the clinic on the first floor, the waiting room for the clinic on the second floor and had an observatory with a wonderful telescope on the third floor. The scope rotated, the silo roof opened and rotated too, so you could keep a fix on your stars. Amazing.

The previous owners had built the house with two houses, over 100-years-old each of them, and that silo, and they reconstructed everything on site. The barn – limestone and wood, banked so we could get the truck and hay into the upper loft, where we had Fall Rhapsodys and fiddlers and played spoons… was amazing. It was going to house Meghan’s office one day. It also held our tractor and snow plow equipment and attachments and things like that, and – if it was icy – horses and Meghan.

The other side of the downstairs had a really great dining room, nice and formal, and a living room panelled in maple the previous owner had milled and cured from trees on the property. He’d carved the woodwork surrounding the entryway to the living room. The marble fireplace had another wood stove in it – much more efficient and warm and so so romantic at Christmas and holidays.

There was a mahogany-panelled office with French doors opening to the pool and patio, and all built-in bookshelves and cabinets. And then the master bedroom wing, with his and hers bathrooms and a big walk-in closet, and a view onto the pond and spillway and into the land and woods that was just the most exquisite thing on earth. Oh, the lighted tennis court was beyond the rear gardens and pool, through a pathway in the woods.

Upstairs from there were three bedrooms – one half of the size of the upstairs on that side. Meghan and Kelsey had their bedrooms up there, and it was their space. Nice…

The paddock and run-in shed aren’t in the picture, nor the miles of electric fencing and the well I had paid to be put in, all for Meghan and the horses. It cost a mint, but that was okay because it was our home, my house, and we’d be there forever.

My gratefuls – That I had an opportunity to live in the most amazing house, on the most incredible property, in the world. And that we knew when to let it go, knowing it would kill us if we had to maintain it and worry about it into our 60s and 70s and beyond.

~ by photokunstler on 1 November 2011.