One of the few books I owned in childhood was a beloved collection of stories by Frances Hodgson Burnett: The Rackety Packetty House, the cover illustration showing a pitiful dollhouse with hanging shutters and spider webs. The pencil sketched lines of the house are misshapen and meandering.

Years later, I owned my own racketty-packetty house. On a street of post-war bungalows and small colonials this house loomed large. It had been empty for several years and was full of moldy furniture, abandoned items, and weeping wallpaper dripping from cracked plaster. But that’s not what we saw. You entered from a large front porch next to lilacs that draped fabulously over one side in the month of May. There were three spacious rooms directly in your sight — a living room with a fireplace, beyond that a dining room large enough to fit my grandparents’ massive table, with lovely built-in china cabinets and a window seat. Then a third room, which would hold the player piano from my father’s childhood. There was an extra room off the hallway perfect for a playroom for our two young children. 

Upstairs there were three bedrooms and a bathroom with an old clawfoot tub. Looking through the largest bedroom there were two more small rooms, one with remnants of a kitchen. Another area overlooked the tiny backyard with windows on three sides, and it would be my art room. It was like being in a treehouse. Strangely, in the one-car garage there was a small dismantled airplane.

Our children were five and three and all we could see was space and potential although we had little money for renovations. We had moved from a converted cottage on a slab so small there was not even a hallway in the house. The bathroom was in the kitchen. 

My mom and dad had come to see the new place and years later my mother told me that she cried all the way home that day. But we held the idealism and energy of youth. Outside of a friend rewiring the entire place for free we did all the work—drywalling, (lots of drywalling), painting, wallpapering, paneling the bathroom, putting in a backdoor and landing. There was so much more that needed to be done but we ran out of money—and time. 

The heating consisted of banging, rusty radiators. The place truly was lopsided—if the kids dropped a ball on the hardwood floors it would just keep rolling. Rats came in through a hole near the drain in the basement. Tiny raccoon handprints were found in the fireplace and on the glass doors. The house was sometimes an embarrassment, but there were some happy memories there. Every Friday was family night in a house big enough to play hide-and-seek, a dining room table to hold a family puzzle, movie night with pizza.

Our beloved German shepherd contracted a devastating disease while we lived there. We said goodbye to him and planted a dogwood tree in the front yard in memoriam.

But then it was not just the house that was in need of repair. It was the two adults living there. Although I had a college degree and taught full-time we were falling deeply in debt. The relationship had never been right, but I kept my discontent, anger, and confusion tucked into my subconscious until my brain could no longer contain it. Like an egg slipping out of the shell, it could not be put back. There were two years of rage, sorrow, crying children, and debt so deep I eventually used a home equity loan to buy groceries. But no matter how many sleepless nights, no matter how many therapy sessions I attended, what was broken could not be fixed. I suddenly had a warped, needy house and two children to provide for by myself. But I was also mostly out of debt. When life has been nothing but agonizing heartache for so long there is a certain rush in starting over. I was in charge of my life and decisions. If there was disappointment, it was mine to own. No more blame and anger at someone else.

Then at the end of that school year my job was cut to half-time. I taught children with learning disabilities and the parochial school I worked for had not identified enough children who needed those services. I could not survive on hourly pay and no benefits. I began to imagine moving the three of us, our canary, and new dog into my parent’s basement. Maybe we could sleep in sleeping bags near the pool table? 

I am a task-oriented person so I began to get my resume in order, mailed them out to every school district in greater Cleveland and I prayed—a lot. I constantly contacted the county which had employed me for a new opportunity. I was truly willing to do anything, go anywhere just to provide for my kids. At one interview the person across the desk from me asked what I would like to be doing in five years. That question is meant to determine your ambition and goals, but holding back tears, I weakly replied—I just want to be a teacher and take care of my kids. I didn’t get that job. 

The summer days on the calendar ticked by and every night I laid awake feeling hope drain from my body and spirit. If you are a teacher and don’t have a job by the end of August you just don’t have a job. I truly believed in prayer but I also wondered why God was testing my faith again. I reminded God that I been tested enough those past two years.

Then came the terrifying day when my children went back to school. The last week of August. I waved goodbye from the lovely front porch swing. I sat in a stupor and couldn’t move or think—hope is essential to thinking and moving. I crept through the house like a ghost for a few days with no motivation or concept of what would come next. I cried and prayed. I felt humiliated that I had been so smug to think I could survive on my own. My parents were loving and supportive but I was in my thirties and did not intend to ever ask them for help. The church offered to make a mortgage payment but I turned them down.

One day the doorbell rang and I received a delivery of a large peace plant. I took it and opened the card. There was no name but ten one-hundred dollar bills floated out and wafted to the floor—-an enormous amount of money to me back then. No one ever admitted to the gift, but I have my suspicions. Sometimes prayers are answered in a way you least expect it. 

On August 31st the phone rang. Would I be interested in a one year position in a school twenty minutes away? It was the same job I had always had of teaching learning disabled kids at the elementary level. The phone fumbled in my hand. The person on the other end warned that it was just for a year with no guarantee for continuing employment. The present teacher had an adoption come through unexpectedly and she wanted to take the school year off. Was I interested? Yes! Yes, I could report to school the next day I tearfully replied from the floor where I had dropped to my knees. When I hung up the phone all I could do was repeat over and over, Thank You, God. 

When signing a contract I discovered I would be making significantly more money in this job and I actually would be fine on my own. I spent twenty-two years teaching in that district before happily and comfortably retiring. 

A few years later I met a man with whom I would share the rest of my life. I put my crooked house up for sale. The first buyers had five children and wanted the spaciousness badly. But their inspector told them the house was caving in and would soon collapse, so they cancelled the sale. Twenty-seven years later I drive by the house where I experienced terror and growth, where I was forced to become more of a human being, the place that ended one season of life and began another. As I drive by now I see the beautiful moments and the agonizing ones as well—and the house still hasn’t caved in.