This post continues a series using the Alphabet to go through streets that were significant in my life as part of the Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge. Amazing I know, but Q is a letter I do not have a street for.  Someone suggested I do “A quiet street” for Q so this post will be about the house on Water Mill Lake, the quietest place I ever lived. Except for that one night something was killing something out in the forest.  And there were those duck feathers strewn around the pathways as the ducks down the road disappeared, one by one.

In 1976, soon after the birth of my third daughter, my mother and Henry moved from the house on Fairfield in Detroit to the house on Water Mill Lake in Lake county.  Water Mill is a much smaller lake than Idlewild and is less than a 5 minute drive away. Lake county is a 4 hours drive from Detroit.  The house was separated from it’s lake front by a dirt road.  In the back, through trees and underbrush, was the Pere Marquette River.  This house was in the Manistee National Forest. Houses were few and far between. My mother and Henry planted a wonderful organic garden, fished and froze the bluegills they caught for winter eating and installed a wood furnace to cut down on the heating bill.  I would go up for several weeks in the summer during June, with my children after the Williams Reunion in St. Louis. We lived in Simpson County Mississippi at that time.

In 1978, shortly after the birth of my fourth daughter, my mother was diagnosed with uterine cancer.  She had noticed bleeding but ignored it for too long and after several years of treatments that took them to Detroit far too often, she died in 1982.  Just after the birth of my son.  Henry continued to live there by himself, seeing his brothers, sisters and friends who came up to Idlewild in the summer. In the winter there weren’t too many visitors.

In 1986 we moved to the house on Idlewild Lake.  Of course Henry became part of our life, eating dinner with us often, us visiting him and him visiting us. He contributed lively discussion, the same kind I remembered from my growing up years, to my children’s growing up.  In 1996, shortly after being diagnosed with liver cancer, Henry died. He left us his house. We rented it out for several years. Our oldest daughter lived there when she returned to Lake County as Assistant principal of the local high school.

In January of 2005, with only one of the children left at home and serious foundation problems with the house on Idlewild Lake, we decided to move to Henry’s.  We added a few windows and had the attic turned into another bedroom.  We had to replace the septic system which took out a few trees behind the garage so we put a garden in back there. We bought the lot next door at an auction. There were deer in the yard, racoons trying to get into the garbage cans. Racoons are so much bigger then they look in children’s picture books. At one time there had been a lot of people who came to that road to fish but the owner of the property had posted it so there was not much traffic on the road and not many people coming to fish. The lake was too small for jet skis and speed boats, that was nice. We had to walk up to the corner to get the mail because the mail man didn’t come down that road to deliver.  There were only 4 houses on the road and only ours and one at the corner were occupied all the time.

Our third daughter moved home after graduating from University of Michigan while searching for a job. The spring of 2005  another of our daughters and her family moved to Idlewild on the way from Seattle to wherever she found a job, which turned out to be Atlanta.  During that summer we had visits from the other children. They stayed between our house and the old house on Idlewld Lake.  It was good to have everybody close by again. In the fall of 2005, our youngest son moved to Atlanta to work with AmeriCorps, then the second daughter moved to Atlanta. Somewhere in there the third daughter moved to Indianapolis for her new job. Our two elderly dogs died. We were down to one cat. My husband and I were alone for the first time in forever. It was wonderful. It was peaceful.

In 2006 our daughter who lived in Detroit moved to Atlanta. In the summer of 2007 we helped our third daughter move from Indianapolis to Atlanta and decided to look around and see what we could find because it seemed to make sense that we all settle in one place to be both support and company for each other.  We found the house with the solarium (which is on Venetian so I will be writing about it in a few more posts) and that decided us. Just as the Michigan housing market went downhill, we sold the Water Mill house and bought the one Atlanta just before that market went downhill. We sometimes talk about how we could have done it differently and held on to that house in Idlewild while spending some of the winter months in Atlanta. Moving made sense but I really miss being on the water and being out of the city.

This post continues a series using the Alphabet to go through streets that were significant in my life as part of the Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge.  This post takes us back to the time when I was still living at home.

My mother bought the house at 5397 Oregon in 1959 for $8,000. It was the first house we owned. Before that we lived in houses owned by the church my father pastored or, after my parents divorced,  in a rented flat on Calvert.   I was 13 and in the 8th grade when we moved in and a 21 years old senior in college when we moved to the flat on Fairfield.  Nine years was the longest I lived in any house when I was at home.

Sitting on the porch with my mother. 1962.

Photographs from the downstairs, various years.

There are no photographs of the upstairs.  There was a hall, three bedrooms and the only bathroom in the house. My room looked out on the backyard.   The other two bedrooms looked out the front of the house. The bathroom was right across from my room and the stairs were right next to it. The hall ended in a door that went out on the upper back porch.  These two drawings are of my bedroom, looking out on the hall and the stairs and the bathroom. They are ballpoint pen and then I sprayed them with perfume. I had to come up with an experimental project for this advanced drawing class and that is what I came up with. I ruined many drawings with that perfume.

Some memories from those years:

Discovering world wide revolution as I started high school. Getting magazines from Cuba, China and Mexico.  Listening to radio Habana on the short wave band of our radio. Spending hours in my room reading, clipping photos and articles, looking at maps, filling in maps.

The Christmas we got several of Miriam Mekeba’s records and they became the sound track for that Christmas.

The neighbor’s house being so close that in the summer I could hear them talking through my open bedroom window.

The summer my cousins came to visit from Athens Tennessee and slept in my sister’s room while she moved in with me. The visit was half over when we discovered they had not set up the cot and were crowding into one twin bed.  We set it up for them.

My cousin, Greta, cutting my hair so that I could wear an afro during this same 1967 visit.

Almost getting to Cuba and Mexico, but not quite.  Did make it to Santa Barbara, CA.

Coming down with the flu one fall day while playing chess with my uncle Henry and being sicker then I remembered being since having pneumonia.

Dried peppers hanging on the kitchen door. Tomato wine/vinegar brewing in a big vat in the kitchen. My mother’s garden under the mulberry tree where she grew green beans. The moldy mulberries under the tree later in the year.

Building an igloo in the backyard one winter.

Pearl walking around the living room on the furniture without touching the floor when my mother wasn’t home.

Nikki Giovanni staying at our house during the 1967 Black Arts Conference.

From my journal:

12/22/67  the winds blowing dry seed on the tree of heaven outside.

1/4/1967 gray, rustle, wind, snow makes more gray. Creaks and roar, grey, grey sky.Everything is quiet. the wind sounds cold. Even the drip of the faucet is cold. Creaks and breath of wind.snow like cover of cold. pale blue summer sky over grey cold.

2/6/1968   i don’t know what’s wrong. every so often i sink into one of these things. deep down loneliness.  loneliness fills you empty.  Apart in a separateness or a separateness is in me. it’s felt inside my stomach. a lump of muscus won’t digest. sits inside me. floats inside my emptiness… apartness is inside me – is me. me is separate. apart. alone. it’s dark. cold/hot. Still.  i stand in a vacant field, large clear area of land off Warren Avenue.  The moon is out. i stand in center and watch the moon.

4/4/2968  it’s beautiful weather out. warm. windy. you should be in the country.  Tonight i a. type 2 stories, one for Billy Thomas, b. do drawing, guess i’d best do the drawing first, correct – part of armor, maybe college type thing. yeah.  that’ll be interesting. go to museum at 4 or 4:30. Eat when? ¿Quien sabe? i have the terrible feeling none of this is going to come out.

4/21/1968  tell him i cried. sat on porch wanting him to come back. look out the window wanting him to take me with him. i didn’t just not want to go home, i wanted to go with him.

“When you are singing
Daily alone
a bird comes
and joins you”