Big Little Things

The houses in Heritage Hill were full of little details that made me smile. There were obvious things, like the garden with the most beautiful yellow irises I’d ever seen. But there were also hidden obscurities that took me a few walks to notice. Like the blue house on Pleasant Dr. that, if you looked closely, had a gargoyle above its porch. But this was a friendly-looking gargoyle. You could tell because it was munching on a stone sandwich. I wondered where someone would even find such a novelty item. 

Heritage Hill is a historical district in Grand Rapids, MI. full of beautiful old houses. It was most well known for the Meyer May House, one of the most well restored and maintained Frank Lloyd Wright houses in the world. It is also where, after I finished college, I worked as a part-time dog walker.

 It was just the sort of place where one could imagine a movie taking place. Or really,  I could imagine each house having its own movie. The navy and brown house with the tower and big round window was the home of a children’s book novelist and his house happened to be full of real magic. The burnt orange house with the vintage porch furniture where I once heard a Nat King Cole song playing through the windows, was the home of an eccentric old lady who had been everywhere and met everyone. And the grey house with the prim white trim and gardens with the weeping cherry tree was the home of a widowed English lady who had been a brilliant architect but was now planning on spending the rest of her years in her garden. 

There were many other houses, with many other stories to imagine. But I couldn’t possibly mention them all. In fact, I passed so many on my walks with the dogs that I went blind to most of them. It was simply too much to take in. And of course, there were all the hints of reality ruining the mood. There were lawn services parked in the street with their long trailers full of three different mowers. There were always different contractors around too. There was hardly a day when I couldn’t hear a distant buzzsaw cutting some new porch railing or kitchen cabinets. 

I got the chance to go into one of the old houses once. They were having an estate sale and I went to poke around the house. Parts of it were as dreamy as I imagined. There was a room near the front of the house with a bay window full of cut glass and framed by a massive built-in bookshelf. And the ceiling was molded plaster. Other parts of the house were sadly outdated. Kitchens with old beat-up countertops and skinny hallways with peeling wallpaper. It was also obvious that a sick elderly lady had been the one to pass on. At least I guessed so by the dated Wardrop being sold for $2 per clothing item and $5 for shoes, and stacks of adult diapers, also being sold at $2 a stack. At the sale, I bought a half-full bottle of shower cleaner for $0.50 and a vintage-looking, but obviously new, copper lantern for $8. 

I admit that when I walked into that sale I had hopes of meeting some interesting stranger. Some who would help me on my journey from a part-time dog walker with a bachelors degree, to a young aspiring playwright with a bright future. Some mysterious benefactor who saw something promising in me and would work to bring it out. Or maybe I’d at least meet the eccentric lady from the burnt orange house. But the only person I talked to was one of the checkout ladies. And the only thing I learned about her was that she too thought the bay window was lovely. 

I also had a fantasy of meeting some handsome man on those streets. One day, having just watched You’ve Got Mail the night before, I would round a corner asking “where is my rom-com?” I knew it was an unrealistic expectation, but I imagined it anyway. I imagined a 101 Dalmations scene playing out as I walked the black lab and he was walking a cute little colly. But that black lab, good girl that she was, was highly reactive to other people and especially other dogs. So I had to avoid strangers on the sidewalks if possible. So no romance ever came my way. 

As dangerous as it is, I also came up with little stories for the people who owned the dogs I walked. The people who owned the black lab spoke Spanish and went to Greece on their vacation. They were also obviously wealthy. Sometimes, when I felt like one of the other people on the sidewalks was watching me, or a car was following me, I’d imagine that the people with the black lab were some kind of international business people with important secrets, and people were watching the comings and goings of their house looking for a way to break in. Luckily, I always locked the door behind me. I say this fantasy is dangerous because I am very sure that they are a perfectly normal couple. They probably do work in business, but only the kind that attracts wealth, not the attention of spies. 

At this point, I am not even sure any interesting people live in Heritage Hill. When I do see people out of their houses, they are usually out pulling weeds in their gardens or describing to a contractor how they want something done. It seems that most of them are normal retired people with nothing better to do than perfect their gardens and renovate their houses. Or the ones that aren’t retired don’t even have the time to take their own dogs for walks. All that reality puts a damper on my fantasies. But all the same, it is fun to walk through that neighborhood and imagine a great story is just around the corner living in the next house.