The Saga of a House
This is the story of a house – my childhood home, to be precise. From the age of nine to just before my twenty-second birthday we lived in a 6,000 square foot Queen Anne Victorian style home in Brookline, Massachusetts. I’ve included a picture of the house as I remember it. It was in an area of Brookline known as Aspinwall Hill and the hill itself was pretty steep. Each street was progressively higher. Our first floor looked into the second floor stories of those across the street, and the apartment building behind us had a catwalk that loomed over our yard. Add an oak tree at the back of our property that allowed my brother and I to use it as a shortcut to get to the next street, and you get a sense of the hill. As a kid I believed the concrete stairs cutting through the middle of the streets that started on Washington Street and ended at the park at the top of the hill was normal. That, like our oak tree, saved time going up and down the neighborhood.
"This is the story of a house – my childhood home, to be precise. From the age of nine to just before my twenty-second birthday we lived in a 6,000 square foot Queen Anne Victorian style home in Brookline, Massachusetts."
The house was gigantic, with all sorts of nooks and crannies to inspire ghost stories. The sweeping front staircase was a marvel, but we preferred the narrower back staircase, which our mother said was used for the servants. The first floor boasted two living rooms with parquet floors, a formal dining room and a kitchen + pantry. The second floor was two adjoining suites, split by a shared closet. The third floor had a giant master bedroom, and three smaller ones. The house also had a full basement that ran the entire length of the home above it. Most of the lot was house, with the yard being sloped and steep.
I left decades ago, moving away from Boston to seek a new life in Los Angeles, which is where I make my home today. But my childhood home always lived in my memory, influencing what I write, from an unpublished urban fantasy trilogy that takes place there to many genre stories, all set in and around Boston, and especially the house in Brookline.
In 2021 I went back to Boston for the first time in over a decade. The time before I went to Washington Street and climbed those concrete stairs bisecting the neighborhood and visited the house. When I got there, a for sale sign was in the yard. My mind raced as to how we could purchase it, but I was thousands of miles away and it wasn’t feasible.
Now I wish I’d found a way.
"I left decades ago, moving away from Boston to seek a new life in Los Angeles, which is where I make my home today. But my childhood home always lived in my memory, influencing what I write, from an unpublished urban fantasy trilogy that takes place there to many genre stories, all set in and around Boston, and especially the house in Brookline."
For my visit, I decided to stay near the old place and explore the city I’d grown up in. Brookline is big on history, so I had every expectation that the house would be there. The hotel was close by, and one free morning I set out to see the old home again.
I walked up the street, and then noticed the bulldozers and detritus of a construction site as I went. I figured maybe the apartment building next door was doing some work….then I realized the house was gone, bulldozed down not just to the foundation, but below that, all remains of the hill the house had been built into removed. I blinked, not wanting to accept what in front of me. The reality hit me like a gut punch. The house, the beautiful Victorian, was no more. I must have stood there for a full ten minutes, heartsick, taking in the awful truth.
"I walked up the street, and then noticed the bulldozers and detritus of a construction site as I went. I figured maybe the apartment building next door was doing some work….then I realized the house was gone..."
A guy across the street told me what had happened. Though Brookline does have strict laws, apparently the person who owned it waited out the year and finally got permission to raze it. Now there are six townhouses in its place. That kind neighbor showed me pictures of it being taken down, and assured me that the things that made the house special had been saved, as much as they could be. I can’t describe how heartsick I was. Sure, the house had issues, but it had been my home, and now was gone. Forever.
Four years later I still think about that instant, the understanding that something that was so precious to my past was leveled. I think about that time in 2000 when I considered buying it, and wished I had. I thought about a hundred different things I could say or do or write to the local paper—and none of those actions would make any difference. The house was gone.
The unpublished trilogy I mentioned is a witches + time travel three book series and the third book is set at that house. I have plans for a tweak to the ending, capturing that terrible moment of comprehension and altering that reality to the one I wish could happen. I can’t bring back the house, and nothing will change that. But I can…in fiction. At this point, that’s the best I can do.
