7722 Glasgow Drive

From the outside, it was just plain hideous. It sat out in an almost rural area of the southeast side of San Antonio, surrounded by empty land and only a few other houses. There was a large horse stable on the next street. It was a large brick house that had no front windows ( when it was being built, there were gang kids living nearby and I feared stray bullets - but then they were arrested and the whole point was moot) and within a short time there appeared a crack between the bricks from the top to the bottom, caused by the ever shifting Texas ground, and the yard didn't have decent grass, mostly rye and weeds that were harder to eradicate than swamp mosquitoes! But, I eventually planted flowers, among them my great-grandmothers purple Irises, many aloe vera plants my mother gave me, pink miniature roses bought for me by my daughter-in-law, bright red kalanchoe and deep purple heart plants given to me by her mother, and a climbing deep red rose that crawled up the fence and into a tree.

I bought the land from a man named Emick, who out of the kindness of his heart - or pity, accepted a small down payment and took payments from me for twelve years. My sons and I cleared the land of thorny bushes, mesquite and waist-high weeds. It took years and a small settlement before I could start building there. The first thing I did was to put up a six foot tall fence around it. My sons and I did the work ourselves.

One of my brothers, Joe, built my house. Little by little, over a period of four years I bought the material to build it, and Joe obtained construction grade sheet rock. One Christmas a man I had talked to at a roofing company called me and said he needed money to take his family on a Holiday trip and was willing to let me have the complete roof truss built for me for less than half the price. I jumped on it, had it delivered, and my brother and a few of his friends put it up in one day, just in time for Christmas. I was ecstatic, it was starting to look like a real house! I saved money and maxed out all of my credit cards to get it finished. My ex husband did all of the plumbing, I was "seeing" an electrician, and my brother came through for me by hiring a few friends from the south to finish the roof. I bought thick, heavy, almost white, concrete bricks and my mother loaned me the money to pay for the masonry work ("southern" friends of my ex) and my son Jerry maxed out his credit cards to pay for windows and doors, which my brother Joe installed. I personally installed window guards on all nine windows. They were the kinds of stainless steel locking guards that can open in case of fire. I also had security screen doors installed. The entry doors were stainless steel and the room doors were solid wood. This house was a fortress!

My granddaughters spent a lot of their baby-hood in that house. They had their own room with the twin beds that Uncle Jerry and Aunt Krystyna bought them, and on one large wall there was a mural that their "PawPaw" Knight (Misty's dad) painted for them. It was beautiful, butterflies with almost human-like faces and flowers and trees.

The house had an open floor plan, the living room led into the dining room with the large kitchen off to the side. The girls learned to ride their tricycles inside the house, going around the dining room table and living room furniture. Outside they had a huge swingset that their Uncle Jerry and Aunt Krystyna bought them and Jerry and Jeffrey put together. They also had a Barbie battery-operated two seater car that Uncle Jerry and Aunt Krystyna bought them and a Jeep. They didn't know how to drive and would run over things and run into people and trees. The guys had to run after them to help with the steering - it was hilarious!

So, anyway, I now had a three bedroom house, with a study and two large bathrooms. One of the bathrooms was so large I put my full size washer and dryer in it and still had a lot of room left over! The heavy bricks made for comfortable living, I only needed window A/C units and small electric heaters. My utility bills combined were less than $100.

I was given many quality furniture items from the family of a rich woman I had cared for. The best thing I got was a 1940-50's electric stove that had a four burner cook-top with space in the middle to place items and the entire cook-top could be pushed in when it wasn't being used. It had two side by side glass-fronted ovens (the doors opened up instead of down) above the hideaway cook-top, and storage space underneath. It was mostly stainless steel and so heavy it took four guys to move it into the house! I loved that stove!

Ugly as it was, the house was my sanctuary. I thought I would grow old and die there. It was not completely finished, there were still a few aesthetic odds and ends to finish, but it was completely paid for, all I had to pay was the taxes every year.

I enjoyed my house immensely. I would throw open all the doors and windows and stay up all night writing or watching t.v. Later, when my youngest son and his wife had the twins, I would stay with them in Austin during the week and return to my house on the weekends. I was overjoyed when they decided to move in to my house with me. Eventually, after they split up and he was given primary custody, I ended up raising my granddaughters there, until my son finished Officer Candidate School in Florida and asked me to bring his daughters to him. Reluctantly, I closed up my house and moved with the girls. He later convinced me to sell my house, and even though my other two sons protested and begged me not to do so, I followed my heart. I sold my wonderful house to help my son out because he said I no longer needed that house, that it would be a burden as it would only fall apart, or could be destroyed by vandals, etc. He said we were now a family, and he promised me that I would always be with him and the girls, to take care of my granddaughters, who now were as if they were my own. You can't take care of children from birth and not be completely attached. I took care of those girls from the time they were two months old until eight years old. I took on the responsibilities that my son required in order to continue his career in the Navy, I did everything for them that a mother would do, from potty-training to buying their first diaries.

I miss my house second only to missing my granddaughters. I feel like that song MacArthur Park: "someone left a cake out in the rain, and I don't think that I can take it, 'cause it took so long to bake it, and I'll never have that recipe again, oh no, oh, no, no, no!" I'll never have my house again. I miss that house so much that it (and the girls) occupy my dreams. In my dreams they are still little and we are always in that house. I guess that my sub-conscience knows that those were the happiest times of my life.

But, if I had to do it all over again, I would never sell my house. It was my sanctuary, it was mine.