It May Be Worth Something Someday part 2

The funny thing about owning a house on the opposite side of the world is that they still want to hand over the keys to show that you have taken possession. Legally, you own a house once all the paperwork is signed and filed. That can be done anywhere in the world. The passing of keys is purely symbolic. Everyone changes the locks when they buy a new house anyway. I could sign everything myself, but I had to designate a proxy when it came time to getting the key. That was actually pretty easy.

Joanne, my high school boyfriend's mother, went to the house and gave me a full report. She was always in my corner during the bout between my parents and me, and even more outraged when she learned that they stole my grandfather's house. She knew me when I was supposed to inherit that house, so she knows how much I could have used it at the time.

I was surprised to learn that the house is in good shape. I suppose I should not be. If their goal was to sell it, my parents would never let it fall apart. Joanne checked the fireplaces, ran hot water through the faucets, turned on the light switches, and charged her phone in several different outlets. She said everything is in working order. The electricity, gas, and water are still turned on, which is odd since no one has lived in that house since 2006, as far as I know. Our best guess is that everything was turned on while my parents worked on renovating the place. Joanne thinks I should keep everything on so the house will be easier to sell. I think that the longer it is on the market, the more I have to pay bills for an empty house. Maybe she should have some people over for dinner and really test out the place, but I doubt she would want to. She kept telling me how clean everything is, and would worry about doing anything to make it look less attractive to potential buyers.

My grandparents' house was built in 1929, which is both a positive and a negative. The attention to detail is unlike anything you would find in a house made after the 1940s. All the mouldings, arches, woodwork, and brass would be seen as too expensive or too ostentatious today. The fireplaces and some of the doors are definitely more ornate than houses made since the Great Depression. The original exterior windows were all replaced decades ago with glass and panes more appropriate for Minnesota winters, but many of the Art Nouveau mirrors and interior glass remain. I am told that some of those mirrors are more valuable than any mirror really needs to be. Why my parents never sold them, I may never know. With the right staging, the house could easily attract buyers.

Until they look at the details. There are none of the open floor plans today's buyers want. Most of the rooms are completely separate. A few are not ideal to anyone who gets claustrophobic. Too many of the walls have wallpaper that any new owner is guaranteed to remove. One of the bathrooms looks like Art Nouveau and Art Deco got in a fight, and both lost. Some of the carpeting needed to be replaced decades ago. While the bedrooms have huge double doors, the bathroom doors are tiny. The mudroom has plenty of space for coats and boots, but no place to hook up a washer and dryer. The entire side entrance is spotless, though I suppose not much snow and mud get tracked in if no one has lived there since 2006. The original garage can hold two or three modern cars, or maybe two SUVs, but it is not connected to the house. That means walking in the snow or rain to get to your car. Fortunately, my grandparents built an attached garage not long after they moved in. The addition looks natural to me because that is the way I have always known it, but it is also smaller than what people want today.

The exterior of the house was recently cleaned top to tail by commercial pressure washers. Obviously, I can't say anything about how it looks up close. In pictures, it looks brand new, which is where it matters most. Anyone thinking about buying the house is going to be drawn in by looking at real estate pictures. All those ninety-year-old bricks and quoins look like they just came out of the brick factory, or wherever bricks come from. If I had not spent my childhood in that house, I would assume it was less than five years old.

Professional gardeners have been taking care of the front and backyard, and have done an excellent job. What Joanne showed me could be in one of those house and garden magazines. It looks fancier than anything my grandmother would have approved of, but it will look good on real estate brochures. Indoors, the walls and floors are as clean as only an empty house can be. Someone painted recently and polished the hardwood floors. The Persian rugs in the living room and dining room are not only still there, they look spotless. I am genuinely surprised my parents never sold those rugs. I can only see photographs, but they appear in excellent condition. My grandmother's office looks exactly like it did when she lived there, except there is no furniture and the bookcases are empty. That room looks naked without books, most of which were my grandmother's. She was a serious reader and worked for Simon & Schuster as a children's book illustrator back when they owned the Little Golden Books. Her collection included more than a few first editions that were probably worth some money. In all likelihood, my parents threw those books away a long time ago.

Some of the bathroom fixtures are new while some are original, or at least original to what my grandparents had. I will need to check, but I am pretty sure none of the plumbing is truly original. I know the entire HVAC system is far newer than 1929. I don't know what they did in 1929. I doubt they had central air conditioning. Two of the bathtubs have been converted into shower/bathtub combos. I'm reasonably sure the house had no showers when it was built. My grandparents only had one. We always took baths when we spent the night, which I always liked. At my parents' house, showers had to be quick. At my grandparents' house, I could sit and soak.

Most of the upstairs carpet could use some work. Joanne says a good shampoo will do. I think some of it might have to be replaced. The carpet in the master bedroom looks amazing. I really can't tell if it is the same as what my grandparents had or if it is new. I had forgotten how enormous my grandmother's closet was. It is more than a walk-in. That closet is large enough to be an apartment bedroom. It is also carpeted, of course. Thankfully, there is no carpet on the first floor. A little polish takes care of the wood and tiles, and a few rugs here and there fill it out. The basement carpet has to go. It is clean and in good shape, and the ugliest carpet known to man. The best thing about that basement was always my grandfather's music room. Since all of that equipment is long gone, it looks like any finished basement now. They put up walls and remodeled the basement to such an extent that it is unrecognizable.

Somewhere along the line, my parents put in new kitchen appliances, which is great news for me. The oven is top of the line and looks brand new. The subzero refrigerator and dishwasher are maybe a few years old. They added an island in the kitchen, which is odd because it already had one. They did not replace it. They put in a second island, which just looks out of place. The kitchen is not big enough for two islands, and the second one eats into the dining room. There is no kitchen sink, for some reason. Maybe that was the next thing they were going to replace. I have to assume they had some kind of island plan that involved a sink or two. The washer and dryer in the laundry room are relatively new looking.

One thing that really steamed my broccoli when Joanne showed me pictures was the swimming pool. My grandparents never had one because the house is on a lake. A private pool is safer and more controlled, but you can do a lot more on a lake. They thought a swimming pool would be redundant when they were so close to a large body of water. But they did put in an in-ground spa/hot tub after they retired.

I spent my entire childhood begging my parents for a swimming pool. Their house was not at all on a lake, or even a pond you could swim in back in the days when the algae levels were low enough. Their neighborhood has far fewer swimming pools than it could, making any house with one more attractive. Someone once told me that most people did not have pools, even though almost every backyard was large enough for one, because there are so many lakes and ponds all over the place. I never really bought that excuse. It was Minnesota, so the nearest recreational lake was less than two miles away, but a swimming pool would have been the greatest thing I could imagine when I was a child. I was an excellent swimmer. Even my brother, with two left feet and all thumbs, could keep afloat. Safety was not an issue. Their only objection was that it was too expensive. When I was younger, I had no idea how much anything cost. When I got a little older, I thought they could afford it. The fact that they eventually put in a swimming pool at my grandparents' house kind of supports my theory. The real issue was probably maintenance. Not taking care of a pool is infinitely easier than taking care of one. The only greater insult to seeing that pool at my grandparents' house would be if they had another daughter and paid for all of her dance and music lessons.

The new swimming pool is smaller than what I would have done. On the one hand, there is plenty of room to put a larger pool farther away from the house where there is more open space. On the other hand, they put it right next to the spa and a detached structure that looks like a pool house. To me, it looks like they screwed up. To someone who never saw the house before, it probably looks completely natural. The pool matches the spa, as if they were both built at the same time. The landscaping around the pool is alien to me, but was obviously done by professionals who knew how to take advantage of the gentle slope heading toward the lake. When I get past my white hot rage, I can admit that the entire installation was well done.

The detached pool house was never a pool house, at least for the eight decades before there was a swimming pool. My grandfather called it the BBQ pit. It is almost the size of the original garage and was obviously designed and built with the house. No one knows its original purpose. It faces away from the road. Driving around the house to park inside it would be horribly inconvenient, while the original garage is the first obvious place to park as soon as you turn in from the street. It was most likely never meant to house cars. Plus, it has a fireplace. One theory is that it used to be a small horse stable, but it only has three walls and there is no evidence that the open side ever had any doors. Leaving a horse that exposed in the winter would be criminal. It was most likely meant to be a place to sit and look at the lake, though there are currently trees blocking the view. The house's back patio has a direct line of sight and is closer to the water. Whatever it was meant to be, the open space was ideal for grilling without suffocating, so my grandfather used it for any outdoor cooking. Now that there is a swimming pool, it looks like it was always meant to be a pool house.

If the house were almost anywhere else, I would worry about selling it to developers who would cut up the backyard and divide it into subdivisions, where the dreamer or the misfit is alone. Today, the lake is where the upwardly mobile of Minneapolis go to get away from the hustle and bustle of the big city. Or the tiny town of less than half a million people. When I was young, I thought Minneapolis was large. Now, I think anything under five million people is a village. Regional differences aside, the last thing anyone wants to do is make the properties on the lake smaller. If anything, people want to go bigger.

After the resorts and hotels of the late 19th century went out of style, people came in and bought all the land around the lake that used to be owned by companies and robber barons. Some built grand mansions, while most, like the people who built my grandparents' house, aimed smaller. For whatever reason, the plots of land stayed the same size. This house is not nearly big enough to be a hotel. Maybe a B&B. But the lot used to hold a hotel. You could easily build two or three more houses on the land, as long as you do not need an upwardly mobile lakeside mansion, and you really enjoy cutting down trees.

My grandfather bought the house when interest in the area was probably at its lowest point since the Mdewakanton tribe was forced out. At the time, people were building cottages and small houses in the area. No one wanted the larger plots of land that required more upkeep. What he paid for the house could buy a new car today. It was not until the 1980s that everyone rediscovered the lake. Ever since then, houses have been getting bigger and the prices of everything have gone up. Today, it is a seller's market. Despite few of the modern conveniences people want, I should be able to sell it quickly. If not, paying for the gardeners, pool cleaners, utilities, insurance, and taxes will destroy me.

Crimson Permanent Assurance

A lot of paperwork comes out in the open when both of your parents die at the same time. Wills are read, insurance policies are combed over, titles and deeds are inspected, houses put in trust get noticed.

I was not anywhere close to being in my parents' wills, which is fine with me. I wanted nothing from them at the end of their lives and would accept nothing from them in death. That is probably easier to say since they were never rich. I can only speculate about how strong my principles would be had they been billionaires. I have no qualms about taking possession of my grandfather's house because he gave it to me, not them.

Then came the insurance. My parents never had personal life insurance. Mostly because they were covered by their church. It started when my father started working there, and I was added right after I was born. Apparently, my father tried to remove me, but he was never the policy owner. The church was, and removing a child from a life insurance policy out of spite kind of went against their brand. I was what they call an irrevocable beneficiary. I could only be removed if I agreed. I never knew anything about it, so I never agreed to anything.

Since my mother died at the same time as my father, the only surviving beneficiaries are my brother and me. Since the church had no idea that my brother was our parents' favorite, they always had everything divided equally among anyone left alive. What all this means is that, yet again, my parents have unintentionally left me something, despite their best efforts. And since it is far less than a billion dollars, I don't have to struggle with redefining my value system. I suppose the sensible thing would be to put the money into fixing up my grandparents' house. But that would help it sell and then I would profit off my father's insurance. The second I was told a check was eventually coming my way, I decided to donate it.

The obvious question is to whom. There are plenty of great charities out there. I would prefer to give this money to an organization of which my parents would never approve. When it comes to charities, my first thought is always groups that help children, like the Children's Defense Fund or the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, or something about cancer, like Gilda's Club. But none of those would piss off my parents. They were pretty terrible at raising children, but they did not hate children. In fact, their church has done its fair share in helping children's charities.

Since they were Republicans, I could donate to the DNC, but that would be like flushing it down the toilet. Before Republicans went full crazy, Democrats were just the other side of the same coin. It is only a matter of time before Democrats fall off their own deep end. My parents would roll over in Hell if I gave their money to Democrats, but other than that, I would get no satisfaction out of it. Both the RNC and DNC are corrupt corporations that could best serve the nation by having a going out of business sale and shuttering their doors. I think I would rather set the money on fire and watch it burn than give it to any American political group.

I could give it to a Chinese political group. That would really make their heads explode. But Chinese politics are almost as corrupt as American politics.

I could just give it to some random homeless people, like Don Ameche and Ralph Bellamy in Coming To America. My parents would never approve of that in a million years. They would say that handouts only make people lazy. I don't know about that, but I would worry about what the random homeless person did with the money. My culture has sufficiently programmed me to think that it would go to drugs or booze, when it could just as likely go to food and shelter. Or more likely, for all I know. I have no personal experience with homelessness. At the same time, I firmly believe that once you give something to someone, it is theirs to do with as they wish. How they use it is really none of my business.

Unfortunately for me, though fortunate for society, there are no homeless people around here. They almost have to exist. No country can be wholly housed. But since we are a bunch of heathen socialists, we don't let our fellow human beings die in the gutter. This country has too many safety nets for anyone to fall through the cracks, unless they are absolutely determined to do so. I have no idea where I could even find a homeless person.

I will probably go with something in the LGBT category. My parents were never the most homophobic people in the world, but they were hardly inclusive. They did not want to lynch gay people, but they never supported marriage equality. If there is a reputable charity that centers on young lesbian girls, that would be ideal. Unfortunately, that also sounds like a bad porn movie I saw once.

I think this might be one of those first world problems you hear about. Woe is me. However shall I give away this free money? But I want it to go somewhere useful. And I really want to be petty about it.

It May Be Worth Something Someday

My grandfather died when I was 16. Not coincidentally, that was the same year my parents and I had our final falling out. He was a decent buffer. My grandmother died almost two years earlier. She was the true mediator in the family. She never took any shit from anybody, so none of us were allowed to get carried away while she was alive. My grandfather inherited the mantle after his wife died, but he could never pretend to be impartial. Everyone knew I was his favorite. He was too good at being a grandfather to ever actually come out and say that I was his favorite grandchild, but we could all tell. And the feeling was mutual. He was always my favorite person. There was a time in my childhood when I wanted my grandparents to adopt me. They never did, unfortunately.

Music was important to my grandfather. Other than a few years in the army, he was a professional musician his entire adult life. He did not come from a family of musicians and often wondered if he had been switched at birth. When he got married and had a son, he wanted to pass on his musical knowledge. That son had no interest in learning to play anything, and took his life into a decidedly different direction from his father. When his son had a son, that son was encouraged to play sports. It looked like my grandfather was destined to be the sole musician in the family.

Then his son had a daughter. I was born to be a dancer. That was simply the way it was. As a dancer, music is exceptionally important to me, particularly rhythm. My grandfather taught me Every Good Boy Does Fine and Good Boys Do Fine Always. I taught myself scales on the piano, using the hunt and peck whole-whole-half-whole-whole-whole-half method. As soon as I was tall enough to reach everything, my grandfather had me on his drum set and taught me everything I know about playing drums. He bought me my first set, which was the only reason my parents tolerated it. I can see where having a child who plays drums might be a little annoying, but they could not forbid it without disrespecting their elder. Fortunately for everyone, my lessons were at my grandfather's house. Fortunately for my grandmother, my grandfather's music room was in the basement.

As a musician, my grandfather never made anything close to Paul McCartney money, though he was hardly in the garage band tax bracket. Money was a taboo subject in my family, but I think I was always aware that my grandparents had more than my parents. I simply saw that as the natural order of things. The older you were, the more money you had. My grandparents lived well. My parents had everything they needed. I had less than everybody.

Not that I grew up in poverty. We always had a roof over our heads, food in the kitchen, two cars in the garage, and plenty of clothes. Everything I ever wanted was an extravagant luxury, according to my parents. Except new clothes. New clothes were welcomed and encouraged. As long as they were respectable. “No daughter of mine is dressing like a cheap whore.” Evidently, an acceptable response is not, “How about an expensive whore?”

My parents were never rich, but they were several neighborhoods away from poor. My father was the pastor of his church, which pays more than it really should. He was also on the board of directors at their evangelical headquarters in Chicago, or whatever the sectarian version is called. Probably church council. Though he only went to Chicago a few times each year, he got paid to be on the board as if it was a real job. He also had an expense account for travel, both out of state and around town. Lutherans do not exactly take a vow of poverty.

For as long as I can remember, I was aware that many people had far less than we did. If I wanted a new toy, I was told about the starving children in Africa who had to play with sticks and rocks. If I wanted to eat something other than what was offered, I was told about the starving children in Africa who had to eat spiders and worms. For the longest time, I had a typically American misconception about Africa, given to me by people who had never set foot on the continent. Many years later, I had a boyfriend from South Africa who never even saw a jungle until he was an adult.

My grandparents grew up during the Great Depression. In the 1920s, my grandmother's family was rich, by any definition. At the beginning of the 1930s, they were homeless. She went from changing clothes for every meal when she was a child to sleeping in the family car when she was a teenager. She knew what it meant to lose everything, and made sure I knew how much I had. Most of my friends' parents probably had higher incomes than mine, but I knew as few rich people as I knew poor people. My childhood was deep in the heart of middle class.

I had to beg and plead with my parents for every little thing, except clothes. I think that might have been more about keeping up appearances than anything else. It was important to my parents, especially my mother, that we all looked like we could afford to live higher on the hog. How I dressed reflected on them, whereas their social circle never knew or cared if I could play Richie Cole's “Shaker Song” solo. I paid for anything music related that was not from my grandfather because my parents thought it was an extravagant hobby, despite the fact that my grandfather was a professional musician most of his life. When people complain about being forced to take piano lessons as a child, I wish my parents had done that. They paid for everything related to all of my brother's sports, when it was obvious that he would never come close to being a professional athlete, but there was never enough money for what I would turn into a career. It is true that my taste in musical instruments leans toward the better equipment. I had a Selmer series III alto sax in high school when there is absolutely nothing wrong with a cheaper Yamaha. But even after I started making money at my “hobby” and my brother was getting cut from one team or another, they could only afford to pay for his extracurricular activities. I left before college, but they were never going to pay for that either. At least for me. They paid every dime of my brother's education.

My brother was unequivocally their favorite child. He was the oldest, their golden boy who followed their rules – as far as they knew – and their only son. He was the only one who could carry on the family name, at least directly. There are probably a million people with our name, but our branch of the tree is not getting any bigger. My grandfather was the only son of his parents and he only had one son, who only had one son. Of course, daughters can carry on the family name in this century, but if I had a child tomorrow, she would have my Chinese name. If not for my grandfather, I would have rejected my English name a long time ago.

I try not to hold any of that against my brother. It is no more his fault that he was our parents' favorite than it is my fault that I was our grandfather's favorite. It was compatibility, personality, and mutual interests.

What I do hold against my brother is that he knew I was in my grandfather's will and never told me.

When my parents died last month, everything they owned was catalogued, assessed, and put under a microscope. No one cares about your thumbtack collection, but lawyers look at property, and the IRS always wants their cut. My parents' house and pretty much everything they did not give to their church went to my brother. Fair enough. I was dead to them, so there was no reason I would be in their will. Had they felt guilty and left me something, I would probably reject it on principle anyway.

An interesting point here is that, in the United States, when most people want to leave an adult child out of their will, they either specifically mention the person by name and indicate that they get nothing, or give the person a single dollar to show that they were not accidentally left out. The purpose is so the child cannot contest the will under the assumption that they were left out by mistake. In some states, but not Minnesota, you can put a clause in your will that someone only gets whatever they get if they do not contest the will.

Instead of doing any of that, my parents showed how big their balls were. Since I was dead to them, they never mentioned me in their will at all. Why would you put a dead person in your will? They either went against their lawyer's advice, or better yet, their lawyer never knew I existed. Legally, this leaves their will wide open for me to contest. I think they either knew I would want nothing to do with them and their stuff, or they genuinely thought of me as dead and I never crossed their minds when writing up the will. Either way, they gambled that I would not take it to court. And they were correct. What is theirs was never meant to be mine. Contesting the will would only hurt my brother, not them. He probably needs it more than I do.

After all the people with suits and clipboards sorted through the cobwebs, something no one was expecting was that my parents owned two houses. Except that they did not. One of those houses was my grandfather's, and he absolutely did not leave it to them. As it turns out, he left it to me. I was a minor when he died, so it went into a trust under my father's control. Naturally, no one told me. After I was dead to my parents, they must not have seen a reason to tell a dead child that her grandfather wanted to take care of her since her parents refused. A few years after I was out of the picture, they tried to sell the house. But it seems that real estate agents have some kind of rule against selling houses for people who do not actually own them. After that, who knows what their plan was. The house was in their will, so they knew it was still there. Leaving it to my brother was not a smart move, especially since he knew it was not theirs to give away. I have no idea what legal consequences he might face. I am told he has cooperated with everyone and never personally did anything illegal. By trying to screw me over, my parents kind of screwed him over, too. His childhood memories of that house are now tarnished by legal bullshit that he never asked to have dumped on him.

When the dust started to settle, I started to realize that I own a house in Minnesota. Obviously, I have to sell it. I like the idea of keeping it, but the property taxes will not go away just because I live elsewhere. And I would need someone to take care of the place. I could rent it out, but finding responsible tenants is difficult, especially from the other side of the world, and I would still be responsible for maintenance. I have great memories of that house. Some of the best moments of my childhood took place in that house. I would hate to supplant those memories with tales of clogged drains and broken pipes. Selling the last thing my grandfather ever did for me might be difficult, but I thought it was sold off years ago. I highly doubt he wanted me to live in it anyway. The only practical reason to give it to me would be so I could make some money off it. He probably assumed that by the time he died, I would be fully supporting myself as a professional dancer, and just like every professional dancer, could use the money. He sure got that right. I was flat broke when he died.

Just for fun, I looked up the address on one of those real estate websites. I don't know how they determine anything, but according to them, the market value of that house gradually increased over the years until it plummeted dramatically in 2018 and then skyrocketed in 2020. I don't know what happened in between those two years. Ordinarily, I would ignore website experts, but the rest of their information about the house is pretty accurate.

The obvious question now is sell or wait. If the price is only going up, it makes sense to see how high it can go. But it will go down eventually. In 2018, it went down hard. I paid nothing for the house, so everything after taxes and fees is profit, but if I sell it in five years for 60% of what I could get today, I will feel like I lost that theoretical money.

The more I think about selling it, the more pissed off I am about what my parents did. When I was 18, I lived in a tiny downtown Minneapolis apartment no bigger than my current bedroom. My grandfather generously wanted to give me his house. He put it in a trust rather than simply name me in his will, mostly to avoid taxes, but also so that no one – presumably my parents – could contest it. My grandfather's mistake was making someone as untrustworthy as my father the trustee. It is far too much house for an 18-year-old, but I could have sold it. According to the internet, I would have gotten far less for it then than I could now, but I needed the money far more then. My grandfather wanted to help me out in a way that would have completely changed my life. Had his wishes been kept, everything would have been different. Then again, would it have been better? Life has worked out pretty well for me so far. It would be too easy to speculate about all of the hypothetical possibilities. If I had sold the house at 18, I doubt any money would be left. If I sell it now, I have retirement savings. Maybe in their animosity, petty selfishness, and general assholery, my parents actually did me an unintentional favor.

But the greatest irony in all this is that my parents wanted to pretend I did not exist, yet through their deaths, I inherited more than they could have ever given me.