Home Sweet Home

I recently purchased the house my grandparents built in 1948 in Winters, California, the town where I grew up just a few miles from the farm, the same town my Dad and Mom grew up in. I spent lots of time over the years with my Momo and Popo Cody in their home. When we were little kids, the only people Mom asked to babysit were our grandparents and aunties. After my grandparents retired, they sold their house to one of my Mom’s good friends, who I ended up buying it from some 50 years later.

I had written my Mom’s friend a letter years ago expressing my interest in the house and offering to buy it if she ever decided to sell. I wemt to school with her sons and they were the ones to tell me that my signature in purple crayon, that I wrote when I was six years old in first grade at Union School, was still plainly visible on the redwood framed garage wall.

I have been driving by the house for years, in fact, almost every time I was in Winters to go home for the weekend and visit my Dad. I think I had told everyone in town how much I wanted to buy that house someday. I happened to be in Myanmar on a trip with my sister when one of my good friends, who happens to be the mayor of Winters, sent me a text to say she thought the house was going on the market. I immediately reached the realtor and scheduled a time to see the house, and made an offer the day I returned from my trip.

When I retire, I’m going to refurbish the house like it was when my Momo and Popo lived there, on the corner of First & Baker Streets. I look forward to returning to where I grew up, to the place my heart will always be.

I guess for me, it’s the circle of life. Am I just crazy, or are you returning home when you retire?

My grandparents Charles and Leona Cody on their wedding day in 1928.