The road to Copake

I've been thinking a lot lately about how we ended up in Copake. Whenever I think through the whole process of how we got here, it becomes a very long story that is hard to tell in one blog post (so stay tuned for a few posts that will tell the tale). For the most part though, we bought the house because we knew that as Mom got older she would need a safe place to live, where someone would be able to keep an eye on her, and she wouldn't have to pay rent or a mortgage. She didn't want to live in the city, and we weren't ready to move to the country full time. So we came up with the idea of pooling our money and buying a two-family "weekend" house. Mom lives there full-time, and we visit most weekends. So far it has worked out well. We see Mom more often than we used to, and she and Vivi get to spend a lot of quality time together. It's great to see them watching cartoons together, baking muffins, and planting flowers in the yard. Things that I didn't get to do with my grandmother.

I did, however, grow up in a multigenerational family. Shortly after my family relocated from Long Island to upstate, my grandfather retired and he joined us. As my sisters and I got bigger, our small ranch house got pretty tight for all of us. There were times when it was difficult to have that many people in one house, and there definitely times that I wished we could be a "normal" family of just my dad, mom, and two sisters. But I found myself thinking about Pop-Pop a lot lately. He lived most of his life in the Bronx and settled into country life in his 60s. From my perspective as a 6-year old, he seemed to fit right in. He and my mother built a small barn for the ponies we decided to raise. he and my dad put up the fencing, and he had a pond dug behind the house. He sort of became a gentleman farmer. While I was struggling with the chicken wire for my garden fence, I found myself thinking about what he had accomplished, and I was wishing he was still around so I could ask him a few questions.

So it was with a smile on my face that I recently read Ben Greenman's piece in the NY Times Magazine about his parents' wanting to buy a two-family house with him and his family in Brooklyn. It made me think about growing up with a grandparent in the house, and about Vivi being able to live part time with her grandmother. Fred and I had many discussions about sharing a house with my mother and how it would all work out. Six months later I wouldn't change a thing. So Ben, take the plunge. You and your whole family will be happy you did it.