14

The Hamilton Homes

It is mid-May, and a respite from reno hell arrives in the form of quick trip to Canada to visit my kids, friends, and the dentist. People consider it eccentric of me to cross the Atlantic for a dental appointment. Believe me, eccentricity has nothing to do with it; it is self-preservation.

Before he retired, my fiery, Irish dentist imparted some firm advice. I was pinned in his examination chair, and when his assistant mentioned that I was moving to England, Dr. McKenna stopped prodding around in my mouth, and fixed me with a stern look: “Never trust a British dentist.” I smiled, nodded as best I could with an aspirator in my mouth, but he leaned in closer and said it again. “Seriously, do not trust a British dentist. You’re taking your life in your hands when you do that.” His warning has been borne out by British friends and acquaintances, who have regaled me with their dental horror stories. Obligingly, I now schedule my biannual visits to Canada around appointments with Dr. McKenna’s successor and a team of gentle hygienists.

Of course, there is a side benefit to this: the dental office is located near all my former homes in Hamilton.

Although I was born and raised in Toronto, circumstance moved me to Hamilton, where I lived for nearly twenty-five years, though not, as you now know, in the same house. I had earmarked myself for a settled life after university, but the reality was that within a decade of graduation, I had married, had two children, and moved house eleven times.

My husband at the time and I were pushed into home ownership. Renting was for losers, we were told: purchasing a home was the path to upper adulthood, and the bedrock of financial and marital stability. In the case of financial stability, the advice was sound. As for marital stability, my marriage was over before the eighties were.

My family and friends were not surprised about my divorce, but when they learned I was moving from Oakville to Hamilton, there was a collective intake of breath. “Hamilton? Are things that bad?”

Hamilton was the armpit of Canada; a dirty, industrial steel town of working-class grunts. In 1988, moving from ladies-who-lunch Oakville to gritty Hamilton was the British equivalent of moving from Chelsea to Wolverhampton, or the US equivalent of moving from Carmel-by-the-Sea to Buffalo. While life’s vicissitudes do not always hand you address choices, in some corner of my mind I sensed that although my marriage had failed, my world was about to be reassembled in an exciting way in Hamilton.

I was completely unfamiliar with Hamilton, but my move there was dictated by a few factors, chief among them being that I had a part-time job at The Hamilton Spectator, my only source of income. (Out of pride and stubbornness, I flatly refused any form of social assistance offered to single mothers.) Being a single mother was about as low down the societal totem pole as you could get when I moved there. Drug dealers commanded more respect. Social demographers and their flurry of research and data were all over single moms like lice in a kindergarten class, declaring that being a divorced mom was the fast track to poverty and to all manner of social, educational, and intellectual disasters for one’s children. They were so wrong. I thrived as a single mother. My kids thrived, too.

Another reason for moving to Hamilton was that it was shockingly affordable. The city was only fifteen minutes down the highway from my previous home in Oakville, but the difference in terms of cost of living was like night and day. In Hamilton, I was able to buy a house in a decent area and cover the mortgage, groceries, and bills and have money left over, all on a part-time wage. You are hard-pressed to achieve that nowadays, and certainly not in Hamilton, which has recently seen the biggest jump in house prices in all of Canada. It gladdens my heart that the city has shaken off its down-at-heels reputation. Since moving away, I have become even more appreciative of this lovely, unpretentious city, and hold it in higher esteem than my birthplace of Toronto.

Hamilton’s new gloss is evident on this bright spring morning as I drive into the city ahead of my dental appointment. The air is warm, and the magnolia blossoms are out. As I cross the high-level bridge over Hamilton Harbour, the city’s burgeoning skyline rises in greeting. On the horizon, ghostly silhouettes of factories and steel mills slip in and out of the haze. Thirty years ago, they were alive, belching out the last gasps of the city’s industrial heritage. Now they slumber like hulking beasts brought to heel.

The drive-by visits to my previous homes follow the same route, in chronological order, like stations of my personal cross. At each house, I pause in the car and silently recite the gospel that pertains to that particular home. Sometimes I pray; sometimes I just let the memories out for a little run. A few times I have wept.

I drive past the historic cemetery on York Boulevard, where I taught my kids to ride their bikes on winding paths beneath a protective canopy of maples. Across the road, stately Dundurn Castle, as creamy white as a butter cake, sits in a verdant ganache of parkland.

At the first lights I turn right on to Woodbine Crescent. The scenery changes abruptly from the elegance of Dundurn Castle to small, plain houses, some in a state of untidiness and neglect. My old home looks a little worse for wear today, and there is no evidence of the peony bush my boyfriend planted as a housewarming gift.

When I first met this house, it took me all of five seconds to tell the real estate agent, “Draw up the papers. I’m buying this.”

“But you haven’t seen more than the front hall!” he said.

“Don’t need to—I know it will be perfect.”

It was a plain early twentieth-century reddish-brown brick house with steps leading up to a small veranda, and a green asphalt roof that was almost all dormer housing the main bedroom. Inside, on the main floor, a small living room with dark-wood pocket doors opened up to a large dining room with dark-wood trim and rose-pink chevron wallpaper. The kitchen, at the back of the house, was white and had a walkout to a small backyard. The basement was partially finished, and it is where I set up a play area for my little boys, a small writing area for me, and a laundry room. Upstairs there were three bedrooms, a bathroom, and a walkout to a spacious deck that benefited from the shade of the cemetery’s trees. I have never been wary of living next to a cemetery: such places provide me with a sense of calm and an appreciation for life.

The house was hardly luxury, but to me I was living the dream. It was certainly the antithesis of what those social demographers characterized for the single-mother lifestyle: according to them I should have been some greasy-haired slattern injecting myself with heroin. Instead, one sweltering summer afternoon I found myself stretched out on a chaise lounge on the upper deck, pink lemonade in one hand, Vogue in the other. I felt utterly content, and with it bloomed the sentiment If single motherhood is society’s version of the road to ruin, bring it on.

The other trope about young mothers—and single moms, for sure—is that their homes are disaster zones of dirty dishes teetering in the sink, disorganized kitchen counters, toys and clothes strewn everywhere. That was never my house. I kept a tidy place both for my sanity and to imprint a standard on my children, for I believe that the first step to raising responsible children begins with teaching them to keep their own space tidy, and to carry that practice outside the house by respecting the property of others and the environment in general.

My eyes now linger on the veranda where my boys played, and as one memory fades another sharply inserts itself: of them waiting eagerly for their father to pick them up for the weekends. They would run squealing joyfully into his arms on Friday, and on Monday he had to drag them kicking and screaming back into my house. Their father was the fun parent; I was the scolding, strict, eat-your-broccoli parent. That my boys preferred the company of their father hurt deeply, but it was something that had to be endured.

To this day, I am grateful that I took the plunge to buy a home when the more likely and perhaps more prudent scenario for someone in my situation would have been to rent. Owning my own home focused my responsibilities and gave me stability and control. Besides, I did not want my boys to think that a woman on her own, especially a mother, could not shift for herself; I wanted them to see that there should be no discrepancy between the resources of a single father and those of a single mother. There was definitely wage discrimination—still is—but the point of my example was that there was no excuse for inequality. It was important for them to see that mothers can work and earn a living. With the rare exception, my experience has been that single mothers do not receive support payments that roll in like a monthly lottery win.

Woodbine Avenue was kind to me, requiring little in the way of fixing up. I did not do much beyond a bit of wallpapering and touching up the painted woodwork.

I acquired a boyfriend at this time. He was handy and did small repairs on the house, and I repaid him with hearty home-cooked meals. That summer of 1988 was hot and sultry, a typical southern Ontario summer. On Friday nights, we slid into his big, black ’79 Buick Park Avenue and cruised down the Queen Elizabeth Way, windows down, cooled by a humid breeze. We drove across the Skyway Bridge, then over the Garden City Bridge, past Niagara Falls, and across the forty-ninth parallel into Buffalo. Sometimes we went for dinner, sometimes just for a drive. Time was an open, unhurried road with no horizon. I felt so free then, so blissfully alive, so in love. Life felt settled, and easygoing. There was no past, no future, only the present. It was a great time to be thirty-four.

A year and a half later, our respective divorces finalized, we got engaged. We bought a home together to accommodate his two children and my two. That is the home to which I drive next.

Trepidation jangles me whenever I approach Hyde Park Avenue; I tend to mentally brace myself, never sure of the reaction the house will elicit. Hyde Park is where a new life began and where it ended, where I finally breathed easy and then suddenly started hyperventilating. There have been times when I have avoided the house entirely on my drive-bys, but today for some reason an inner strength governs me.

I do not spot the house as soon as I turn onto the street. The trees and shrubs on the other properties have matured in the intervening years and now obscure the approach slightly. But then I see it: a still-handsome two-and-a-half-storey coral-and-cream brick Edwardian; three chunky creamy pillars supporting a broad veranda; cream trim around the windows. Its current owners obviously care for it.

The house impressed me at first sight in the summer of 1989: it had the space for our blended brood; it had the location for good schools; and it was in a leafy, tranquil neighbourhood. My low-cost single-mom years had me worrying that such a home was beyond our means; however, my fiancé was smitten, and his enthusiasm carried away any misgivings.

Four months later we married on a snowy New Year’s Day. Our reception was held in our new home. The twinkle of white lights strung across the veranda and wound around the pillars reflected in the freshly fallen snow and made everything look magical and clean. My two boys and stepson in their little suits and bow ties, my stepdaughter in a pink floral dress and little pink ballet shoes: we looked like a happily-ever-after family. By the end of that year, we had a daughter, the bridge in our blended family.

What with the five kids bouncing in and out of our house, people wondered how I kept it all together. But I did—we did. Hyde Park was my Tara, and I adored the life I had there. Our home was the locus for street-hockey games, for dinner parties and birthday celebrations; of big family Christmas dinners, and cozy weekends in front of the fire playing board games or watching TV. I was even fortunate with work: In addition to my part-time editing job at the newspaper, I became the Homes columnist and feature writer. I was now paid to nose around other people’s homes.

Life was good, and a few years later, one Christmas, we took the kids to Disney World. My husband and I were not fans of theme parks, yet we had a truly wonderful time. Best vacation ever, it was agreed by one and all. We even talked about returning one day.

But you can never trust the Magic Kingdom. Shortly after we returned home, everything toppled. My husband inexplicably ceased speaking to me. At first, I thought it was a joke, a bit of game playing, but no amount of cajoling or begging on my part would convince him to talk. He just stopped communicating with all of us. Was he worried? Upset about something? He would not say. I had loved my husband deeply, and we had been an affectionate, playful couple, so this swift change of behaviour was a kind of torture. It was hard enough to maintain a brave face with the children, but my husband and I were by then working at the same Toronto newspaper, and our disintegrating marriage became office gossip.

As the silent treatment continued, and I agonized over what could have brought it on—another woman? a sudden drug habit? a mid-life crisis?—I walked around the neighbourhood in the late evenings, cloaked by darkness, embarrassed by the state of my marriage. This was my second, so it certainly felt like a curse was upon me. I walked up and down the streets, looking enviously at the light spilling from other people’s houses, wondering what ingredient I lacked that they apparently had in abundance. Were they really happy, or did danger lurk behind their confident laughter and smiles as they sat around the dinner table or chatted across the kitchen island with wineglasses in hand?

Dreams were my salvation—day and night—and I began to confide them to a diary. Always present in these little fantasies was a Victorian cottage with my children tucked snugly and safely inside. They were a balm, these musings, but they also struck me as outlandish: surely my marriage would, could, be salvaged. I could not imagine being separated from my husband; then again, I could not abide being treated so harshly.

Now as I sit in my car outside the Hyde Park house, my nose prickles as memories and emotions collide. Just then, a well-dressed woman emerges from the front door. She eyes me with curiosity as she waters pots of geraniums on the veranda. I wonder if she is pretending. I grab my mobile phone and pretend to take a call. I avert my eyes. I do not want to engage with her or anyone on the street.

Hanging up my pretend phone call, I stare straight ahead and move the gearshift to Drive. I proceed up the street, not making eye contact with the other houses, each with a story I could tell. Left at the first intersection, then left again.

The next house is the one I thought might save my marriage, which is why I bought it one morning on my way home from grocery shopping. It sounds like something my mother would do.

My cell phone had rung while I was steering my trolley through the supermarket aisles, wondering if there was a meal I could cook that would change my husband’s heart toward me. The person calling me was a friend who happened to be a real estate agent.

“I’ve found the perfect home for you. It’s a Victorian cottage!” she said excitedly. I could almost see her jumping up and down. “Just what you wanted.”

I had not told her about my marital troubles, though in hindsight it was likely all over the neighbourhood by then. The house sounded intriguing; I said I would call her the next day.

“No, you have to see it right now. It’s not going to last the day,” she said.

Fifteen minutes later, my car was turning into its driveway. Whereas the Hyde Park home sat high and proud, the house on Stanley Avenue cowered like a cornered animal. It was a small house whose brick exterior had been painted rusty red; nonetheless, it was definitely a Victorian workers’ cottage, and it was most definitely the home that had always surfaced in my dreams, though I had never driven past it before. It had few rooms, but they were generous ones. On the ground floor were two bedrooms, a kitchen, a bathroom, and a spacious living room/dining room. A ramshackle addition off the kitchen opened to a roomy side yard, which in turn led to a large backyard overgrown with tall grass. Upstairs were two attic-type bedrooms with low, sloping ceilings, and a large, unfinished attic space behind one of the bedrooms. The basement was too dark and scary to merit closer inspection, but it looked to be high and dry.

To say the house needed work was an understatement. It was as close to being condemned by the city as a house could get. But it was cheap, and even after renovating it there would be more than enough money left over to retire our debts, which might help my husband feel less burdened.

I made a lowball offer and left it at that. If it was not meant to be, then it was not meant to be.

When I returned home with the groceries, my husband was in the kitchen. He had resumed speaking to me but only on an as-needed basis.

“Is there more?” He was asking if there were other bags to bring in from the car.

“Not in the car. But I did buy something else.” I braced myself. “I bought a house.”

“You did what!”

I told him about our mutual friend’s phone call in the grocery store.

“It needs work, but it is cute and sound. Huge backyard. But don’t worry. I made a lowball offer. There is no way it will be accepted.”

Relief blew out of his tight-set lips.

And then the phone rang.

“You got it!” the agent squealed down the line. “Can you believe it?”

My husband liked the new house and shared my vision for it. He enjoyed gardening and drew exciting plans for the backyard. But the house could not save our marriage. A few weeks later it was over, and our Hyde Park home went up for sale. It sold (we lost money on it, the first and only home of mine that has), and we went our separate ways.

I do not blame my husband for leaving; we all do what we need to do to get the life we are destined to have. Relieved of our collective and individual aspirations within a marriage, we become the people we are meant to become rather than the people we perhaps wanted to become.

STANLEY AVENUE WAS ONLY FOUR BLOCKS from Hyde Park, which meant that my children did not have to change schools or sever friendships. What did change was that they were now conscripted into helping with the renovation. When I was younger, I had wanted to get as far from my parents’ penchant for moving and renovating, but here I was, back at it, and dragging my kids into it.

It proved a good home. If Virginia Woolf pined for a room of one’s own, one now had, once again, a home of one’s own. Although I was inconsolable about the demise of my marriage, the house erected a kind of force field around my grief. It also became a refuge for teary friends who showed up on my doorstep, having been ditched by their husbands. This divorce thing was racing through the neighbourhood like influenza. We medicated with wine.

There was something spiritual and calming about the Stanley Avenue house. It seemed to understand and absorb sadness, as if overseen by a non-judgmental, compassionate caretaker who slipped in quietly to mop up the tears. In the evenings, when the children were in bed, and dark and silence descended, I lit candles, put on a CD of Gregorian chant, and knelt before a blazing fireplace, praying for strength and for the continued safety and health of my children and parents. It was also during this time that my prayers gave me the strength to make the tentative steps toward confronting the trauma of my rape, which had happened fifteen years earlier. Around me the walls pulsated with the orange reflection from the fire, like beating angel wings. I knew nothing of the previous owner aside from the fact that he had been a churchgoer, and that his pastor had been his executor, but those small details felt like a kind of blessing bestowed upon the house of which I was the grateful beneficiary.

I am not sure whether people sit down and consider how much sacrifice and labour go into making a home, especially one with children. The physical plant—heating, running water, electricity, ventilation—is definitely vital, but there are the additional comforts that are chosen to ensure the home’s inhabitants feel safe and snuggled: the arrangement of furniture, the placement of art on the walls and knick-knacks and books on the shelves. These all tell the story of the family’s history, roots, and become daily visual reminders of that history: acorns scattered on the windowsill tell of a recent walk to the park; a shell conjures up a trip to the beach; a blanket at the end of a bed or draped over a chair evokes a memory of being read a story while you cupped a mug of hot chocolate; a painting on the wall triggers emotions and distinct memories of where it came from, a grandparent’s anecdote about it, the way it alters in different kinds of light; a simple photograph on a bedside table that you see the moment you open your eyes in the morning can bring a moment of joy, heartbreak, or wistfulness. There is the gathering of appropriate furniture—desks on which to do homework; closets and chests of drawers to protect clothes; bins and baskets in which to store playthings. A cherished stuffed toy placed against the bed pillow can convey messages of love, order, and security that register mightily in a child’s psyche and imagination.

Making a home for my children at this wrenching time in their lives was stressful for all of us. They were on the cusp of their teen years, with their opinions and elastic boundaries; they compared their home life with the style and the material comforts of their friends’ two-parented homes. Status was a marker for their generation, and I did not want them to feel less worthy than their peers for the sake of a pair of the latest style of running shoes, so I took whatever freelance work I could get to supplement my income. I worked extremely hard to keep everything afloat.

I was not always at my best—alcohol and cigarettes helped me cope with grief and lack of confidence—but when that period passed and I shook off my weepiness and addictive crutches, I stood tall and assured—assertive, even. Walking out the front door was like crossing a border into a new land. My well-being bounced back; my physical strength soared. When it came to outdoor maintenance, I was like a machine: lacing on steel-toed boots and lugging eight-foot railway sleepers to frame a vegetable patch. I did all the heavy lifting—physically, emotionally, and psychologically—as single mothers do—because there was no choice, no one to off-load the responsibility for even a moment.

And yet I am humbled and privileged by this phase, of having single-handedly made a home for my family. It is only now, decades after they have left and have built nests of their own, that I see the enormous trust that was given to me, not just to make a home for them but to care, nurture, and of course love them. It is no secret that raising children is tough, especially if you are a single parent, and the regret is that you do not have time to stop and marvel at your fortitude and courage while you are in the midst of it. Only after the major parenting has been done can you look back and exhale, wondering how you did it, and how well you did it.

Stanley Avenue was home for five years until an opportunity, disguised as a near-fatal car accident, prompted me to move with my young daughter to Pelee Island during the winter of 2001. It was a deliberate escape from the caffeine-fuelled rat race in order to recalibrate myself and concentrate on my desire to write. For a time, it worked: the national newspaper I was working for as an editor commissioned me to write a series of columns about the experience, and my columns turned out to be a success. But once I returned, refreshed, to the frantic world of journalism, I got scheduled back into my old job—copy editing on the news desk at nights. Around this time, the newspaper offered to pay my moving expenses if I moved from Hamilton to Toronto. The car accident still fresh in my mind, I decided to accept the offer, and I sold my Stanley Avenue home.

After Pelee Island, we lived with my mother for a few months while I searched for a new home in Toronto. In late August 2001, we moved into a house in the Beaches area of Toronto. Housing prices were much higher than Hamilton ones then, and I ended up with a huge mortgage that sat like a tumour in my chest.

Two weeks later—not yet out of boxes—the catastrophic horror of 9/11 changed everyone’s world. The impact of the attack reverberated in me as intensely as if it had taken a member of my own family. I remember staring at the startling blueness of the sky and wondering whether it was the result of the power of collective communal shock among humanity and its ensuing outpouring of silent prayer, or (morbidly) whether the carbon released from all those who lost their lives in the attack that day had altered atmospheric conditions. Or whether it was a hopeful sign from God. As fear and chaos radiated around the globe, economies and businesses contracted; people were laid off work. The media business in which I was employed was not immune: a week after the attacks I found myself in a crowded room with colleagues and a stack of severance packages.

There was no stability in the world; there was no stability in the workplace. Even our new home felt unreliable, unstable, as if it were teetering on precarious foundations. Whenever I went upstairs, bouts of vertigo assailed me.

In the midst of devastation there are always miracles. Two months after being laid off I was offered my first book contract, from which blossomed my writing career. I also gained a new friend in the single mom next door: we shared a party wall and, as we discovered, the same birthday, and became forever friends.

Despite the political, social, and emotional aftershocks of that period, the one thing that seemed unshakable was the Toronto housing market. Knowing I would not be able to afford the mortgage on my home without a steady job—and full-time employment then was pretty much non-existent—I put the house up for sale eight months after we had moved in. It sold within twenty-four hours, sight unseen, to an Australian couple. I even made money on it.

Two months later, the kids and I were back in the familiar environs of Hamilton, where the offer of a full-time job materialized along with our next home.

THE HOUSE ON HERKIMER STREET was an elegant detached Victorian with deep frontage. It had been divided into two rented flats, and I converted it back to a single-family home as soon as I became its new owner.

By this time, I was adept at home renovation—or rather, adept at knowing who to call to do the work. I never paid more for a house than I could afford: not the amount the bank said I could afford, but the amount I worked out on paper myself, based on what my salary could handle while leaving enough to care for my children. There is nothing worse than the stress of owing money. I once borrowed money from my parents in the early 1980s, and it was an experience I never wanted to repeat. While far from being mortgage-free, I was grateful to my bank for having faith in me: single mothers did not always get approved for mortgages (thankfully that societal attitude has turned). I worked out the cost of necessary renovations and factored that into my mortgage application. After that, I set financial goals and timelines for the work on subsequent phases of renovation. I was no financial wizard—far from it—but I was fortunate to have decent-paying jobs and a quiet social life. I was not always sensible or practical—some things were paid on credit—but I knew my limit and never overreached it.

Herkimer Street was a large project. Inside and out the house needed attention. By now, I had come to expect that I was doomed to buy fixer-uppers. The terracotta brick had been painted a flat, rusty red; the window frames and fascia boards were coated in layer upon layer of dull green paint that was cracked and peeling. Shrubs, trees, and grass had grown wild and unkempt. It was the sort of house a kid would avoid on Halloween. Inside, the place had been architecturally cleansed. Stately double glass doors between the living room and dining room had been ripped out—frame and all—as had a walnut mantel. Glass transoms had been painted over and sealed shut with flat white paint. The pine and maple floors were covered throughout the house in beige carpet that smelled of cat pee. None of this concerned me: I had my trusty list of Hamilton tradesmen to call upon to remedy it all.

My neighbours to one side had an identical house to mine, except they had fixed theirs up to a stunning degree. They were interior designers who were only too happy to offer decorating advice. They suggested paint colours for the exterior woodwork—mustard, dark green, and aubergine—the same colours they had used on their home. I was happy to comply: what looked great on their place would look great on mine.

There was a little something inside my home, however, that no amount of interior design could change: a ghost.

People are reluctant to talk about house ghosts for fear of being considered crazy, but ghosts exist; of that I am certain.

The ghosts in the Henry Farm house were benign things, just pootling about looking for people to tease. Given the age of that house, you would be naive to think none existed. But ghosts linger in modern houses, too. In one suburban home I lived in, where my first marriage ended, the new owners ordered an exorcism to rid the house of that just-divorced smell. I thought it was a bit extreme: I can be a bitch, but I am no she-devil. And frankly, people would be lucky to have me as a ghost. I would be exceedingly respectful.

The ghost in the Herkimer Street house was the real business, though: a cantankerous, miserable fellow, who made his presence known before I was halfway through the first can of pale-sage paint in the master bedroom. A whiff of pipe tobacco had curled into the room while I rolled the walls with paint. I paid it no mind, but when I heard heavy footsteps in the hall, I figured someone had come into the house.

“Hello?”

I peeked out the bedroom door. No one was there. I would later come to understand that the burning pipe tobacco and heavy footfall up and down the hall was the ghost’s calling card.

That first night in the house, I was awakened at three in the morning by the scream of the smoke alarm. I fumbled for a flashlight and ran panicking through the house looking for fire until I arrived at the basement door. As soon as I descended the stairs, the door slammed shut behind me, and I heard footsteps in hasty retreat on the floorboards overhead.

It did not take long for me to figure out that while this was a home crying out for TLC, it came with a ghost crying out for me not only to leave it all alone but to leave period.

At first, the ghost used the usual bag of tricks: knocking pictures off the wall, slamming doors, and breathing close to my ear. The middle-of-the-night smoke alarm was a particular favourite. My children looked at me for an explanation to this paranormal mayhem, but I feigned ignorance.

One day, as I dragged the cat-pee carpet out the back door, a grizzled, ponytailed fellow leaned over my back fence.

“So, what do you think of the third floor in your house?” he chuckled.

“You must be mistaken,” I replied, wrestling with the carpet. “There is no third floor.”

“Oh yes there is,” he said. “The trap door in the ceiling of the closet in the small bedroom?”

Gosh, he was awfully specific.

“Poke your head through that. It was Karl’s favourite room.”

Karl. So the ghost had a name. But a third floor? How come my neighbours knew more about my home’s layout than I did?

I went back indoors and climbed the stairs to the second floor. I peered up at the small trap door in the ceiling of the little bedroom. Then I went back downstairs and decided to hold off further exploration until someone with more nerve showed up.

A few days later, my ex-husband arrived to pick up our daughter. As he waited by the front door, casually admiring the house—we had both shared an interest in old homes—he asked whether I had come across anything interesting. I relayed my conversation with the ponytailed neighbour.

The ex’s eyes widened.

“And?”

“Well, I wasn’t about to check it out. Not on my own.”

“Can I?”

“Help yourself.”

“Kids! Grab a ladder!”

Soon, the ex was storming up the stairs, trailed by three children and a stepladder. He disappeared into the loft, groped around for a light switch, and then—

“Holy. Shit.”

“What!” we all shrieked.

His face appeared in the trap-door opening. “Get a camera.”

By then we were all frantically climbing over one another to see inside the loft.

And what we saw was eerie. A huge plywood board stood in the middle of the attic like the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Upon it was mounted all manner of switches, fuses, an old TV aerial, and a tangle of electrical wire, most of it dangerously frayed. Beside this master-control board was a little wooden bench upon which sat a conical-shaped hat made of tin foil. According to my ponytailed neighbour, Karl would climb to this attic perch each Friday to dial in Mars.

A month later, an electrician came over to dismantle the contraption. He entered the loft, switched on the light, and then—

“Holy. Shit.”

His head poked through the loft hatch.

“Mind if I take a picture? I have never seen anything like this before.”

Okay, so old Karl had been an eccentric. It was also clear that Karl had not quite left his earthly home. I could live with that. What I could not abide, however, was Karl’s blatant irritation with my renovation plans. Whenever I started moving furniture, ripping down wallpaper, or tearing up carpets, Karl made his displeasure known.

When work began on the upstairs bathroom, Karl retreated to the back bedroom and kicked up an unholy racket similar to that wreaked by Marley’s ghost in A Christmas Carol. It sounded as if Karl were pounding the walls and upending the furniture, yet when I opened the bedroom door nothing was amiss.

I was not the only one privy to this cacophony: Gord, the builder, heard it also. He was redoing the bathroom. Thank goodness he was not spooked by Karl. Not in the least.

“I had a ghost in one of my income properties,” he told me in his matter-of-fact way. “It did everything to get me out of that house. One day, it unleashed a hideous smell. I swore at the ghost and took a sledgehammer to the walls. That took care of things. There are a lot of homes with ghosts who don’t like their surroundings disturbed.”

While Gord worked on the bathroom, I weeded the garden. I had decided to try to win over Karl, so I complimented him on his landscaping. “Nice garden, Karl. Such a variety of flowers!”

But since Karl was making it clear that he was not going to be buttered up, it was time for the gloves to come off. You can only take so much of a ghost’s tantrums, and Karl was like having another teenager in the house. The few friends I dared to confide in about the ghost advised me to invoke the mantra “Go toward the light, Karl” and be done with him. But I never take the easy way out. This was war.

I started with mockery. “Fancied yourself a DIY guy, eh? One of those misguided morons who think he does better work than the pros. Well, you know what? You are shit at DIY, Karl. If I had not come along, this place would have got a yellow card from the fire department.”

Karl paced loudly up and down the stairs.

When I scraped the paint off the glass transoms and finally jimmied them open, I sneered: “Was this intentional, or just sloppy paintwork on your part?” He sighed heavily next to my ear. I paid no heed, and blithely hummed “Highway to Hell” as I continued to scrape.

Whenever he let loose his fury, I flew at him unflinchingly: “If you were any kind of a man, you would not be trying to terrorize a poor single mother and her children—you would be protecting us and helping us. I am busting my ass all day at work so that I can pay to correct your crappy workmanship, while you live here free of charge and complain. You call that gratitude?”

One day, I returned home from work just as the floor refinishers were packing up their gear in the front hall. It became apparent that someone—I assumed it was one of the crew adding the final coat of Varathane—was still upstairs, so I stood with them making small talk.

After a too-long length of time, I asked the foreman, “What is taking your guy so long?”

“There is no one up there. We are all here,” he said. He glanced at his mates.

We paused to listen to what sounded like someone beating their fists on the walls and jumping up and down on the floor.

“Do you hear that noise?” I asked the men.

“Yes. We heard it earlier, too,” one of them said, “but we thought it was one of your kids.”

“It is not my kids. One second.”

Hands balled up into fists, I stormed up the stairs. When I reached the door of the room from which the sounds were coming, I yelled, “I have had it up to here with you. You are behaving like a child. Either you cut that out or you get the hell out of my home!”

With that, I stomped back downstairs, waving my arms in frustration.

“Sorry about that,” I apologized to the floor refinishers, who by now had their backs pressed against the wall, eyes as wide as saucers. “We have a temperamental ghost living here. He gets pissed off with the renovations.”

It was the last job they did for me.

I eventually gained the upper hand over Karl. I like to think that I gradually wore him out. Perhaps the laughter and boisterousness that percolated through the house softened him. Perhaps he figured that if he backed off, I would not play heavy metal music so loud.

The one bad memory I have of the home involves theft. One night, as the household slept, someone pried open the dining room window and stole my laptop. It had the draft manuscripts of two books on it. In my naïveté I had not made backup discs. Hard lesson, that. It is times like that when a ghost would come in handy: Karl had obviously been dozing on the job.

The rest is happy memories. This was a home of family celebrations, holiday get-togethers, and personal growth. My confidence blossomed, and I began to travel, gaining new female friends. Up till then, I had been shy and tentative about girlfriends, possibly from the fear of moving away and losing them, possibly from being unsure of my value to others; but new gal pals came from hiking groups, from those I met while walking the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, and through my writing. Of the few steady older friends I had, I paid better attention to them, appreciating more the comfort and familiarity of their warm companionship, and the kindness they had shown me over the years when I was too distracted or depressed to notice. Things had brightened now. We would sit in my garden late into a summer’s evening beneath an umbrella of trees and flickering lanterns, sharing heartbreaks and dreams while fireflies zigzagged like fairies. I felt at my freest in this house: secure in my job; secure in my gradual transition into a writing life. Sometimes it takes a certain house to give you the space to grow and bloom.

My children were going through that rebellious stage that afflicts most teenagers, so our home was not immune to sharp arguments over curfews, homework, and, inevitably, overnight guests.

Early one beautiful summer’s morning, I awoke to the sound of giggling coming from the bedroom of one of my sons. Was it the radio? I eased myself out of bed, tiptoed closer to his door, and listened. I discerned a female voice. I could hardly believe it. My son, my eighteen-year-old son, had brought home a girl to spend the night in my house.

I honestly did not know what to do. I turned around, tiptoed downstairs, made a pot of tea, and spent half an hour arguing with myself over the lessons I had apparently neglected to teach my children. They were, for the most part, respectful and obedient kids, so this was quite out of character. Surely they knew that bringing someone home for a one-night stand was up there on the not-done list.

After the second cup of tea, I gathered my courage, marched to the door of my son’s bedroom, knocked politely, and asked in the sweetest voice I could muster, “Darling, may I see you for a moment?”

He emerged from his room wearing Donald Duck boxer shorts. I led him into my bedroom, closed the door, and addressed him, sotto voce, with a blend of incredulity and anger while I scanned his face for signs of substance abuse.

“What the hell are you thinking? Where did you ever get the idea that this is okay? I do not care who she is. Send her home now. I am calling a cab.”

“Ah, Mom, not right now. It’s early.”

“Noooowww!” I drew out the word and held him with a “You are so in the shithouse, buddy” gaze.

The young lady presently came down the stairs. The cab was idling in the driveway. She introduced herself sheepishly to me, and said, “You have a lovely home.”

“Thanks,” I said with a tight smile, and opened the door. “Goodbye.”

I marched back upstairs to confront my son, who was lolling in bed. I tried not to look too closely at the state of his room, particularly the bedclothes.

“Do you feel an apology might pass your lips?”

“It’s not a big deal!”

“It is a big deal. That behaviour is not allowed in this house. Sending Sarah home early in the morning is embarrassing to her and to me.”

“Sarah?” he said. “Her name is Sarah? Uh-oh. I thought it was Courtney!”

I sat down at my laptop and drew my line in the sand:

THE RULES OF THIS HOUSEHOLD

1. Absolutely NO sleepovers without prior (24-hour) notice and a really good reason.
2. Any sleepovers involving the opposite sex must receive prior verbal approval from me. Unless you are married or cohabitating, your partner cannot share your bedroom. They must sleep (alone) in the guest room.
3. Your friends are welcome in our home anytime, but they must leave by midnight (12 a.m.). There will be no extension to this rule. This rule is made out of consideration for our neighbours, as well as for my need of uninterrupted sleep.
4. You must immediately clean up after your guests, whether you have entertained them inside or outside. Smoking is forbidden in our home and is strongly discouraged outside our home. If your guests smoke, you must dispose of their refuse. Butts and other garbage are not to be tossed in the garden or over the fence. Bottles are to be neatly placed in the outside recycling containers.
5. If your friends are drunk/depressed/fighting with their parents and they need a place to crash, this can be accommodated, BUT ONLY with prior verbal approval from me.
6. Those who live in this house must perform two chores per week. These chores will be determined by me and must be performed without pouting and/or protestations and within the time frame stipulated. It would be appreciated if you could anticipate the needs of this household from time to time and do a chore without being asked.
7. You are responsible for cleaning (vacuuming and dusting) your room and keeping it tidy and to my standards. Those standards may seem high, but as the owner of this house that is my prerogative. Beds are to be changed every second Thursday on the day the housecleaner arrives. Ditto for a thorough cleaning of your room.
8. As a writer with deadlines to meet, I require a tidy, non-chaotic space. Occupants of this home must respect that need and do their utmost to ensure it is met.
9. In return for your adherence to these rules and your day-to-day co-operation, you will receive my gratitude and respect, as well as free room and board and all the conveniences of this household.
10. Any deviation from the above will result in two warnings, followed by eviction.

Signed,

Jane Christmas,

Proprietor and Owner

July 14, 2007

Well, then, I hoped that made everything abundantly clear. I cannot believe I had to spell it out for them. Naturally, the children found the whole thing hilarious. They laughed at my list. They brought their friends over to laugh at it, too.

But this is the thing about homes: they need rules. The fabric of the building and the humans who live within its walls need care if both are to survive and thrive. Cohesion inside a home depends on a code of conduct, be it a tacit one or one that needs to be theatrically fixed to the refrigerator door with magnets. A home’s peace is governed by its inhabitants, and the atmosphere, the warm and aromatic enveloping that you feel in the best homes, is often the result of co-operation and decorum. Aromatic oils do not hurt, either. Still, it is necessary to remember that a home does not make itself; its owners do, and the kindness you show a house is repaid tenfold. You can sense a well-loved home the moment you cross its threshold, and that intangible and ineffable something can be more important than how the house looks.

I loved this Hamilton house. I had always held the Hyde Park home as the gold standard of all my homes, but in fact it was this one, this Herkimer home, that is my favourite. It was the house in which I have lived the longest. It was a good family home, but it was also one that lent itself to a writer’s life. It was rambling, but not too rambling; it was private, contained; the rooms spacious and airy, with the right amount of light at the right time of day.

The irony of home renovations is that just when you get it all done, just when you coax everything to your own level of comfort, it is time to move. At least, it was for me. The kids had grown and were off on their own adventures, and I was ready to scale down to a condo.

On moving day, I wandered through the empty house room by room, admiring the transformation, letting family memories off the leash. I stared out a window and watched the wind tickle the leaves of a tree my children and I had planted three summers earlier. Then I heard those familiar footsteps creeping toward me, softer and more considerate than in the past. The distinctive aroma of pipe tobacco, comforting now, wreathed nearby.

“I have really enjoyed living here, Karl,” I said, turning my head toward the footsteps. “It has been a wonderful home. Truly. You could have a been a little less annoying, but there you go. Anyway, it’s time for me to move on. A really nice young family is moving in. It would be best if you moved on, too. Go toward the light, Karl. Go toward the light.”