Tag Archives: Written by Susanne Kessaris

We moved to the central Carolinas when our daughter was six weeks old. We found a rental house which served little more for us than storage for all of our  belongings.  It was a split-foyer so we used the entire lower level for boxes that we never even bothered to unpack. We began a quest to find a new home right away. After much deliberation, we decided to build a house in a subdivision with a two-story one garage plan. We chose a sloping wooded lot above a creek at the end of a cul-de-sac which offered us more privacy in the backyard.

Being in a builder’s subdivision, there were a lot of things about the home that were predetermined. On the outside we got to choose the color of the siding, shutters and front door. On the inside, we got to choose the carpet, floors and light fixtures.The process was fairly stress-free and time went by quickly as we made one decision after another. By the time our daughter was six months old, our house was finally ready and we got to move in.

To place our personal stamp on the “hill” house, we did some minor things to it. One of these was some landscaping.  We planted shrubs and trees in the front yard. Our decorating budget became drastically reduced, however, during that first year when my husband’s job was phased out. We managed to scrape together enough funds to finish off a small corner of the oversized garage for a home office. This gave my husband a private space to draw maps and sell real estate so that we could pay our bills for a while.

We ended up moving to northern Georgia for another job and sold the house. We did not make a profit on it. In fact, the economy was in a downturn. Though we considered renting it out, we finally  accepted a low offer to keep from having to pay two house payments. We found out later that the people who bought the house after us, fenced in the back yard only to lose the fencing later during floodwaters in a heavy rainstorm.

In this house our daughter celebrated her first birthday. She had her first sugar rush with cake and ice cream. She took her first steps and spoke her first distinguishable word, “fluffla”or flower, in our front yard.  She climbed out of her crib in the middle of the night, frightening us so much that we ended up putting her mattress on the floor.  I locked myself out of the house one day while she was asleep in her crib and had to borrow a neighbor’s phone to call my husband to come home.  She fell down the stairs here learning to climb them and cut her lip.  She got her head stuck in the railings dividing the kitchen from the den. The house was memorable in many ways but mostly for milestones associated with our daughter’s first year of life. 

After visiting Waco, Texas and the famous Magnolia Market, I have reflected on my own “fixer upper” experiences. Through the years, my husband and I have taken on a few real estate remodeling challenges.

As a child, I remember my parents fixing up two houses. My grandparents did the same.  I guess when you don’t have a lot of money to buy your dream home, you make lemonade out of lemons, so to speak.  It takes a vision for what it can become.  I have learned   that this is the fun of home ownership.

Every home we have ever owned, has been a work in progress. We have scoured, stripped wallpaper, painted, and changed each place to improve it and put our own personal touches on it to make it ours.

In 1983, we owned our first home in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC. It was a townhouse.   I will call our first home “the  blue barn house”.  It had all the space that we needed for a starter home. There were three levels. Three tiny bedrooms and a bath were on the top floor. A kitchen, half-bath and living room were on the main floor. There was a walk-out basement on the lowest level. What was interesting and sold us was that the basement walked out to a fenced garden space with raised beds and a small barn-like storage building. We had the end unit next to a playground so had more gardening space along the side of the house. I ended up planting flowers in the back yard and vegetables along the side yard. Our laundry area was downstairs along with another half bath. The area was heated by a wood stove which made the space very cozy.

In the kitchen, the previous owners had put up some nice tile as a back splash along with real barn board along one wall.  The style then  was country so this lended itself well to the decorating trend of the time.  All we needed to do was a little painting and decorating to make the house feel like home. We ended up painting the orange basement walls yellow. We had to live with the brown shag carpeting throughout the house. I made some cute rust colored curtains with ducks in the design in the kitchen to match my duck  theme throughout the house.  I stenciled a flower design along the ceiling of the bedroom walls and a rocking horse border in the baby’s room when I became pregnant with my daughter.

  All our hard work paid off for when we listed our house for sale, after only three years of ownership, our house sold in three days.

I have revisited an important lesson in the last few weeks.  I have been having difficulty letting go again.

My mother had a heart attack two weeks ago.  She had been to a doctor’s appointment that morning. She wanted to go alone but something told me to go with her.  I saw her walking up the sidewalk to the front entrance as I pulled in the parking lot. It was good for me to be there to be an extra set of ears for her as she has become hard of hearing. It gives me peace of mind also to converse with the doctor myself concerning my mother’s health concerns.

Lately, her blood pressure has been elevated and when they tested her blood, she was anemic. The doctor prescribed an iron supplement which we were going to fill after getting a quick-lunch.   We went to a local Panera Bread since Mom likes their soup. She was feeling fine until we sat down. Suddenly she started feeling dizzy and put her head down. She started going in and out of consciousness. Her left arm started shaking.  I tried talking to her. She told me she needed to use the restroom then wanted to go home. I walked with her to the restroom. As soon as she got to the bathroom stall, her legs buckled and she began falling. Fortunately, I was there to catch her and break her fall. I laid her head down on my purse so that she did not hit her head on the floor.  This was the first miracle. The second miracle was that I had passed two police officers at a table just outside the bathroom. I grabbed them and had them call “911.” The paramedics came within minutes.  They took her to the hospital.  I phoned my husband and met him at the emergency room.  The EMT’s met me at the door and told me my mother had a heart attack. They were working on her.  We waited for about an hour to find out the prognosis.

The time in the waiting room seemed like an eternity. Some candy-stripers offered us some snacks to eat that had been provided by a church. I looked down and noticed that the bag of chips I had chosen had a scripture verse taped to the outside. I marveled at how God must use this wonderful ministry to provide comfort to distraught family members in the hospital waiting room.

As I nervously sat with my husband, I noticed a lady sitting alone across the aisle from us. I struck up a conversation to try to console her as well as myself. Her husband was having heart surgery. He was only 49. She said he had a condition known as “the widow-maker.” As worried as I was about my mother, I wanted to offer a prayer for this woman. I asked her if I could pray for her and she was happy to oblige. Somehow, praying for someone else in the midst of my own crisis made me feel better.

Finally, after an excruciating wait, the doctor came out to talk to us. He took us into a room and showed us an image of my mother’s heart.  He said he had put a stent into an artery that was 99% blocked and that she should recover well but would need to stay in the hospital at least 3 days.  We were told in the ICU that she was very lucky! She still has some challenges to overcome.

I have been caring more for my mother as she has gotten older. I try to convince her to do things to take care of herself as she gets stubborn sometimes. She almost refused treatment in the emergency room. If my husband had not been there to coerce her, she might not have signed over to let them work on her.  Try as I might, I have to keep giving her back to God.  He has given her back to me this time. For that I am grateful.

I find myself revisiting the old lesson that God keeps trying to teach me to let go. As I left the hospital during one of my visits when I struggled convincing her that she must stay a few more days and abide by the doctors’ directives, I felt the Lord saying to me “Let little birds fly.”