Delray Revisited

Delray.

That's the word that comes to mind when I think of neighborhoods and "good old days." I never lived in Delray, don't recall ever visiting there other than driving through with my dad as a kid. Delray is a little corner of Detroit where European immigrant settled many years ago to raise their families and figure out a life in America. I'm sure the people who experienced it would tell you about poverty and hard times. Yet, those people have also told me about family and love and fond memories. Delray is a slum now. Nothing to go back to. In the mysterious way of the entire city of Detroit, it has turned on itself and intentionally self-destructed. If anyone has figured out why mansions and gardens are better enjoyed as hollowed out graves without headstones please explain it to me. But I digress.

The black and white pictures of families in the old neighborhoods continue to call out to me and I've yet to give up the dream of the old days. That's why I keep hounding my parents to buy a house on my street and we continue to plan the family compound. You see, I believe that the better ways of what was doesn't really just fade away unless we turn our backs. I know that in those old Delray homes, people struggled to keep food on the table. I know there was abuse and alcoholism and crime. I don't think it was a Dagwood & Daisy Bumstead life. Although that is what I'd really like it to be! Still, I think we walk too easily away from closeness and across the street family.

So here I am all these years after Delray. I still look up and down my street and daydream...mom & dad could live there. Amy & Rob there? Pat & Tom and the girls and their families there, there, there. Every time a for sale sign is erected on our block I have a little inner voice assigning which family should live there. You may think it sounds a bit Pollyanna (and why not?!) but yesterday the Mr. counted the seven houses bordering our property and decided it would be ideal if my parents bought one of those houses someday so a gate could be installed for yard to yard access. Better than across the street, you see. And daboyz, we'll want them to choose homes within walking distance too. The easier for the grandchildren to ride their bikes over. It's not altogether ridiculous. I lived within riding distance of my grandparents. My kids walked to my parents. It's really just a matter of holding the line, of not accepting the distance.

I don't know it time and opportunity will allow Delray to be reborn in our lives. If not, I suppose the ten minute drive between us isn't a tragedy.

And it is true, I am not the homemaker my grandmothers were. I don't have the luxury of walking across the street for a long morning's coffee break. It couldn't be the Bumstead Delray hybrid I dream of even if I could force everyone to live on my street. I'm quite sure the daydreams of family dinners every Sunday would become the burden of family dinners every Sunday. I bet my dad would comment on our too long lawn and I'd think to myself, "If only they didn't live across the fence!" The grandchildren would come riding up the drive after I've worked ten hours and I'd groan, "Can't I get an evening's rest? Where are their parents!" I know, I know, I know.

But you know what else? I suspect that fifty years ago, grandmothers wanted quiet evenings and fathers criticized landscaping and women rolled their eyes as their neighbors walked up the walk for a cup of coffee. It was still good, better even. You'll never convince me otherwise.

So I'll continue to watch the for sale signs and mentioned in passing (not really in passing) that so and so should buy that house so we'll all be close by. I'll sit on my deck in the morning with my coffee and wish my mom was just across the fence to join me. I'll be an obnoxious mother-in-law and "encourage" my boys to move their families in down the street. And maybe someone someday will be tricked into my compound. And like it or not, they'll like it!

Who knows, someday you might just open an e mail from me with a real estate link...

Said the spider to the fly...;)