Frank, I've Bought A House

My grandmother, apparently, was the force they say is to be reckoned with. Even though I lived with her for quite a few years, I was not quite sure where the power lay in the family of two. Perhaps it was shared so equally that it never mattered who did what, or how decisions came about. Nellie Vail and F. Everett Vail had their ways and, however quietly they did things, it all happened.

Example: the house. As I heard it from Mom, one day in 1913, Nellie came home and said, “Frank, I’ve bought a house.” I don’t know if she had been sent looking, if they were planning to buy one, or if she just thought it was time. A builder put up two houses of the same type in town and Grandma signed on one of them. They moved in during a blizzard with my 3-year-old mother in tow.

A close family friend called early this afternoon and said, “Frank, I’ve bought a house.” She has been looking for some time now, has found several dream houses, but none were quite right and, even though you never find the perfect house, she kept moving on. Until six weeks ago, when the best bet came on the market and she had a feeling this was it.

Closings are somewhat similar to the guy on the Ed Sullivan Show who spun six or seven plates on long sticks. He’d get to the last one and the first was very wobbly; then there were two others that were about to fall. It seemed as if there was always one plate too many. At closing time, there’s just one more thing to do than you think you can handle, but you do and, finally, it’s, “Frank, I’ve bought a house.”