Mrs. Maureen Eustis: Writer

Twelve years ago during the summer before I started first grade, the Eustis family moved in next door. Mrs. Eustis quickly became one of my mother’s best friends and her daughter Maddie became mine. As anyone who knows her can attest, Mrs. Eustis is wonderfully witty, warm, smart, and fun. She became my second mom. She was always there for skinned knees, broken bones, carpools, and lost puppies. I learned to swim in her pool. I will never forget my first trip off her diving board. My mom was screaming, “be careful,” as Mrs. Eustis just smiled and said, “you’ve got this, Grace!” Years later when I was learning to drive and had trouble navigating our curvy driveway, my own mom would holler, “cut the wheel, cut the wheel,” while Mrs. Eustis just waved and said, “don’t worry, Hon, they can reseed the grass in the springtime.”

Six months ago she lost her dad, after having lost her mom years before. It was then I discovered something I didn’t know about Mrs. Eustis - she is also a talented writer. Reflecting on her dad’s life and death, she wrote, “my heart is both full and broken.” Now she writes about the experience of selling her childhood home- the place where her parents raised their four daughters and where Mrs. Eustis’s childhood unfolded in those ordinary hours and extraordinary minutes that make a life. For me, this piece is even more powerful knowing that when and if the day comes in the far-off and distant future when my brothers and I sell our childhood home, Mrs. Eustis will be a part of those memories for me. She was always “right next door,” cheering us on, making us her famous chocolate chip cookies, helping to finding solutions to our problems, buying the one and only subscription to our homemade newspaper, The Cindy Ann Times, letting us fold 1,000 paper cranes in her basement, watching countless off-off Broadway productions of Grease, jumping dead car batteries, driving U Haul trucks, donating a sofa to my brother’s college dorm, chain-sawing fallen tree limbs, officiating at doggie weddings, painting us an incredible watercolor of our home, and always, always making us laugh.

Perhaps I look at these four walls differently now. I know I cherish the people who live here with me a little bit more, and I thank my lucky stars that the Eustis family came to live right next door to my childhood home.

THE THIRD FUNERAL: LETTING GO OF MY CHILDHOOD HOME by: Mrs. Maureen Eustis

When my mom died in 2003, she was 65. Last September my dad joined her at the age of 79. Now my childhood home is poised to leave me too. It is only 44.

Years ago when I moved out of the first home I ever owned with my husband and 2 small children, I was devastated. After the movers came and went, I cried alone in every empty room, to the point of dehydration, as if performing some sort of homeowner’s cleanse. My dad sympathized with me over the phone later that night. His words of comfort were “Honey, a house is just wood and nails. You take the memories with you.” At the time I agreed and felt better. I even passed those same words along to others over the years hoping to make them feel better too. But now those words are falling flat. In truth, those seven words are no more helpful than telling someone these seven: “I believe everything happens for a reason.” But I know my dad was trying to help me let go so I wouldn’t be dragged.

Right now I am sitting outside my beautiful childhood home in the cul-de-sac named Dean Road. I’m waiting for the movers who are going to pry the piano out of the carpet divots it created four decades ago, and bring it to my house in Rhode Island. Through my closed Jeep windows I can actually hear waves of “nail fire” as they are spit from hydraulic guns directly into the brand new oak flooring being installed today. Wood and nails. It was too loud inside so now I sit in my car.

In 1972 my parents packed up their car with their four kids inside and made the long and treacherous 6 mile journey south from North Reading to Reading. From a 900 sq. ft. Cape to a shiny new 4 bedroom colonial, which probably still smelled of fresh paint. I was 4 years old and cried hysterically when I realized we were never going back to the other house. The family joke was that my halting answer when asked why I was crying was, “I…miss…the…black...kitchen…floor.” True story.

Growing up in one of the 7 houses on Dean Road was nothing short of idyllic. In hindsight, as a 48 year old mother of kids who are forced to grow up too fast, I can admit that my sisters and I were sheltered; figuratively by conservative Irish Catholic parents, and literally by a green (of course) home whose paneled and wallpapered walls silently observed all the boring and dramatic moments that form the quilt of childhood.

As a mother of a 19 and 14 year old, I now fully appreciate why my mother could never relax until everyone was “back in the barn” and not out on the roads “with all the drunks.” The house was our safe zone. Our home base.

One by one, to my mother’s dismay, we each eventually moved out to begin the second chapter in our own stories. The day I moved out, I had gathered a ton of stuff from all around the house—most of which wasn’t technically mine, but hey, I had a new apartment to fill. I watched at the front window for my now husband Bill to come down Dean Road in the rented truck. My dad walked in from the yard and surveyed the situation. I watched him as his eyes combed over my collection of his stuff. After a minute of silence, I sheepishly asked, “See anything you’ll miss?” To which he replied. “Yes. You.”

And I missed him too. And my mom. And my sisters. And my house.

Soon after my dad passed away, we were contacted by a woman who desperately wanted to buy our house. She wanted it for its size. She wanted it for its quiet street. But she mostly wanted it so her little boys could grow up 2 houses from her brother and his young family. They could nearly turn Dean Road into a compound. I was thrilled! This would be perfect. The house would be filled again with loud kids and maybe even a dog. The pool would again overflow with endless cannonballs and the street would host teams of kids playing whiffle ball, hockey and 4-square.

No so fast. My three sisters promptly overruled my utopian daydream and suggested we take our time shining up the house and then list it. Over the next four months we should have installed a revolving door to accommodate the throngs of carpenters, painters, electricians and charities who came to work or pick up donations. The house in which my dad had recently convalesced was once again alive with activity and laughter. We had so much fun and so many poignant reflections as we took our time sorting through a lifetime of belongings. We four women even had a sleepover and watched old family movies, projected on the kitchen wall, of our parents on their honeymoon.

Our “barn” will go on the market in a few weeks and the prying eyes of strangers will explore every inch, many through their computers. People will traipse through and lament that the bathrooms are small and the kitchen cabinets are original—and by that I do not mean unique. A part of me wants to show prospective buyers this house in its heyday. Every inch filled with a story, a memory, and so much love. But they won’t care. Just like you don’t want to see ALL of your coworker’s vacation photos. I get it.

The day we pass papers on 22 Dean Road, I will once again cry over a house. But the list of things I will miss this time will be long and won’t include any flooring.

It really feels like a third funeral. We’ve acknowledged the loss, we’ve prepared the body--as the wood floor guys are doing now--and then we say goodbye forever. First mom, then dad, and now what we simply have always referred to as “Reading.” I don’t remember each and every Christmas, birthday, meal or conversation that took place here, but I remember that they did take place and I am who I am because of what happened under this roof. I hope the next family who lives here will be happy. I hope they live in every square inch. I hope they, too, will cry when they are waiting for their moving truck someday. My sweet dad was only ever wrong 3 times: when he said math is fun, when he said I had enough gas to make it back to UNH, and when he said a house is just wood and nails. It isn’t. No more than a person is just flesh and bone. The wood and nails will stay and the possessions will go with us. But I guess the memories will go with us too. For that, Dad, I’ll give you back half a point.

[After six day on the market, on the 13th anniversary of our mom’s passing, my sisters and I accepted a very generous offer from the same family whose sibling owns a house on Dean Rd. Their offer included a photo of their family and a hand written letter to us explaining how much they want the house and how they promise to love and take care of it as we have done. In the offer, the buyers suggested a closing date of June 20th, which happens to be the exact same date my parents closed on the house 44 years earlier.]