Putting Down Roots

I’ve lived in a lot of places in 43 years – Lexington, KY, Georgetown, KY, and Sadieville, KY all before moving to Defiance, Ohio when I was a junior in high school. Since then I’ve lived in Bluffton, Ottawa, Toledo and Findlay. Throw Hollywood, Florida into the mix somewhere and it adds up to six apartments and seven different houses. It all reminds me how much I hate moving.

The reason I’ve been thinking about all this is that Ali and I were having dinner with her grandparents on Sunday afternoon. They were telling stories and we were talking about the house on Hurd Avenue that we are buying. As we talked about the house, Grampa Weising kept getting more and more animated. It turns out that he thinks his grandfather built it! On their way home that evening they drove by the house and he’s fairly certain that his relatives built it and lived there through at least the 1930’s.

That same afternoon Grandma Weising was telling stories about her life growing up. Ali was taping all of their conversations so she can do more research for her family tree. Grandma was telling about how she had dated Grampa since the 9th grade and how they were married in the house she grew up in. Someone asked the address – just for the record – and it was 125 Rector Ave. Immediately I knew that it was my friend Alaine’s old house, the one she just moved out of a couple of years ago. When Grandma was describing coming down the stairs in her wedding dress I could easily picture it in my mind, having been to Alaine’s house on several occasions!

I don’t think I know anyone outside the Weising family that has lived their whole lives in one place. Two houses from their family history are among the few houses that I know and have visited in Findlay. It seems like such a romanticized idea. . .living in one place your whole life. All I know is, after this next move I want to put down some roots. And throw away the moving boxes!