Confessions of a Blogaholic

All of my grandparents' property, including the house I grew up in, was put on the market this week as a development or extensive rehab opportunity. I'll come back to this property in a minute.

Mammaw's family reunion was today. Her sister, Shelby, gave a touching speech to recognize all of the people who are no longer, including both my grandparents. I couldn't help but to shed a tear or two wishing they could meet Rylee, wishing they hadn't had to go so soon, wishing I had had just a little more time to show them all I would become as a result of their faith and belief in me.

Shelby has spent some time working on this ginormous family tree notebook. It's literally an attempt at recording our HUGE family: all the limbs, branches, roots, etc. All the way back to my grandma's grandparents.

Back to the property, for a second. As I've said before, there are three houses on my grandparents' land. The house are old...so old that in the original deeds to the property, it explicitly states that the property is not to be sold to "negroes". I'm almost embarrassed typing that, but the deed is a product of the time in which it was written. The houses are as old as the original deed, and they are almost completely dilapidated. There's the house my grandparents lived in, the "blue house", and "1820". All three are about 100 feet apart, and I spent my childhood living in 1820, but running among the three as all were occupied by some portion of my family.

Flash to the reunion...while looking through the family history, I saw that my grandma's mom, Fannie, lived in the blue house WAY back in the day, which first, indicates how long those properties have been in my family, and second, show how important those properties really are to my heritage.

So...family that has lived in my grandparents' house...obviously, my grandparents, my great-aunt and her son, my mom, dad, and I when I was first born ALL lived there at some point. The blue house...my aunt and her daughter, my great-grandma on my grandpa's side and her second husband (before she was moved into a nursing home), my great-aunt and her son, and my great-grandma on my grandma's side (who worked at the nursing home where my other great-grandma was eventually placed). I'm not as sure about 1820, but I know we lived there for 10 years before my grandparents started using it as a rental property.

As I wrote in a blog a long time ago...it is going to be sad to see all those houses go. And now, it is going to be even moreso sad because I know how important that little piece of land has been to my family for some decades. It's weird how a short string of houses on one lonely, dead end street, can be so used by one family.