Somewhere Between Grief and Grit
- Caroline
- Feb 26, 2023
- 3 min read
As I churn my way through projects at the Victorian, I find myself vacillating between sheer joy and flow, and moments of complete overwhelm and stagnation. I am giddy with excitement picking period-correct finishes for our bathroom restorations. The original claw foot tub and pedestal sink were safely stowed away in the basement, presumably by our father, in the hopes that someone would once again return them to their rightful homes. I bought restoration kits for them only to find out after a good scrub, that they are in near-perfect condition. And yet, I am also exhausted with the sheer amount of work and the loneliness of the job itself: Toiling away for hours on end alone in an old and empty house, only to retreat to an even older and emptier house each night, chock full of its own troubles that one by one reveal themselves at the most inconvenient times.
Feeling the crush of responsibility to keep these properties not only standing, but thriving, my mind searches for the strength to push forward. “This is supposed to be the dream,” I tell myself, as if to will my discontentment back into its convenient little storage box. “This is what you’ve always wanted!” the voice in my head says, daring me to feel anything but ecstatic about the tasks ahead. But then another, quieter voice implores, “But this isn’t really the dream, is it?”
I grew up repairing and restoring houses with my dad. For him, a successful engineer, it was a hobby; a passion that he shared with his two (sometimes unwilling) daughters. As I grew and learned to appreciate these skills and lessons, my husband and I tried our hand at “flipping” our first home in Northern Virginia. (I use the term ‘flip’ loosely, because we lived in it for 8 years while we systematically gutted and improved each space, room by room). We were fairly successful in this endeavor and were fortunate enough to “upgrade” to a newer home a little further west - I could see mountains!
During our “flip” I quickly fell in love with the renovation process: Working alone, working with my hands, seeing my progress, working to the point of physical exhaustion, and a sense of accomplishment and bad-assery. I loved this feeling so much, I wanted to fill my life with it and share it with the person who had taught me to love it - my father. In 2014, I took a real estate course and became an agent with the goal of going into business flipping houses with my dad. I was going to call the business “Working House”, based on a family tale of my sister’s first years of life. I drew up business plans and scoured local listings, ready to present my dream to my father. The response was tepid at best.
A master-and-apprentice business was the dream; a way to learn as much as possible while doing the work that brought me so much joy. I spent the next few years revamping and re-pitching my business plan to Dad (with always the same disappointing response) and fumbling my way through pretending to be a real estate agent, while simultaneously being a pretty damn good public school music teacher.
It wasn’t until we lost our dad in 2021 that this dream of working on houses was thrust upon us without our consent. We were left with gifts that felt like burdens and burdens that felt like gifts. Dreams long-since placed on a shelf were now sounding alarms and literally crumbling before our eyes. Everything felt like a crisis: Leaking roofs, disintegrating chimneys, decaying trees, flooding basements, deteriorating barns. We put our heads down and did everything that needed to be done, rarely taking the time to process the enormity of the tasks we were choosing to take on, let alone the grief of losing our father to lung cancer over the previous six months.
We are not living the dream; we are building a new one. We are doing our best, and it’s not perfect, but it’s progress. We are doing ok, but we miss our dad. We miss being able to ask his advice. He always seemed to have a solution for everything. We are figuring things out as we go and finding new folks to learn from. We are assembling a team of trusted advisors and tradespeople to come on this journey with us. The work is hard, but it feels right. It’s lonely, but I’m not alone. Dad’s birthday is coming up on March 2, he would have been 74, and the only gift we have for him at the moment is the promise that we will be OK.
