The assignment couldn’t be tougher: Scout out a house — and garden — for my blessed mother, one she might consider.
Mind you, my mother has lived joyfully since 1963 in the four-bedroom house where my four brothers and I grew up and learned to spread our wings. It’s a house my mama fell in love with way back then as she scoured the North Shore in just two days after my papa, once again, was transferred to a big city she barely knew.
It’s the lot that stole her heart, with its big, old trees, a pond and stream, and woods across the way, plenty of room for her many gardens. And, best of all, she always says, it looks onto a country club where her sunset views are unobstructed.
Getting my mama out of that house, well, it will take a not-so-minor miracle. And, for even a wisp of a chance, it must have a heavenly garden at that.
The garden, according to my mama, is a non-negotiable essential. It is a holy, sacred place to a woman whose hands and knees are mostly always muddy.
Because my mama has been the caretaker of my two boys two days a week since the older one was born nearly 16 years ago, it makes sense, I think, to have her move closer to us (I’m the only one of five still in this part of the country), so some day I might return the favor should she ever need me to keep an eye on her.
Believe me when I say I set out most gingerly as I tried to find just one little house with room to grow a garden. All I hoped was that she’d consider it long enough to imagine its possibilities. Just think, I thought, we could visit every day. (Hmm, maybe that’s why she mostly insists she isn’t budging.)
I called Jean-Marie Minton, a broker associate with Keller Williams Realty in Lincoln Park, who knows the North Shore well, and who went through a similar transition with her parents back in Boston. Minton is just about as thorough and big-hearted as I could wish for, and I knew she’d take extraordinary care of the house hunt for my mama.
In no time flat, she’d plucked plenty for me (and maybe my mama) to look at, and the choices were so delicious, I easily skimmed the cream, and we set out to see what we could see.
One of the three looked so heavenly from the listing photos, I was ready to convince my architecturally inclined husband (Blair Kamin, the Tribune’s architecture critic) that, despite the years of work we’ve just about finished on our old house, maybe we, too, should downsize.
But when we pulled up in front, I swore we were at the wrong address. So little did it resemble the house I thought I’d fallen hard for. Both Minton and I, good Irish Catholics from way back, let loose a word or two the nuns might not have smiled upon. But, egad, it stinks when a house in real life looks nothing like the fairy cottage some photo tricks make it out to be.
In the end, the house I’d pick for my mama is a classic Cape Cod with a screened-in porch and plenty of yard for her to garden.
It’s in northwest Wilmette, a neighborhood known as Kenilworth Gardens, a lovely tree-lined pocket of town where one house is more charming than the next.
While the other two houses might have oozed more charm, they also shouted, “I need work.” At 78 and change, my mama needs no work. She needs to be able to move in, have a serene place to sit and, of course, get her hands right back in the dirt.
The slate-blue Cape Cod on Beechwood Avenue had all of that. It’s spick-and-span clean, something my mother would love. And except for the bedrooms, which are thickly carpeted, it’s got gleaming hardwood floors. The paned picture window in the living room lets southern light pour in. And the screened porch off the dining room — with French door and nearly ceiling-to-floor windows across the length of the wall — gives my mother yet another reason to bask in the great outdoors.
And whereas the other two houses we looked at had little to no room for sitting in the kitchen, this all white and maple galley kitchen had a built-in table and bench, just waiting for what she calls her “morning ritual” — hot steamed milk, doused with coffee, the newspaper and her beloved crossword puzzle.
The three bedrooms give her choices. Heck, she’d have room for any one of her brood to spend the night.
I’ll not hold my breath, but the rolling lawn offers endless possibilities for her deeply green thumb. And her ever-muddy knees.
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bmahany@tribune.com
