Of My Eyes

Of My Eyes Part 1

              OF MY EYES

Madness, it could only be madness; that's what it was.
If only I could separate the truth from the madness.
Then maybe I could understand what has taken over our lives.
Hear it from the beginning, before the madness came upon my family.

By any standards you chose, the house was old.
Sitting on a 12 acre lot on the outskirts of town, we found this place in the hopes of us starting a new life.
This was going to be our dream house.
While it needed a lot of renovation, it was the very house we had searched for.
The repairs and upgrades needed to bring this house up to local codes was well within our budget.

So it was that on this magnificent spring day we took possession of our new home.
Built in the late 1890's, it was a large Victorian style house.
Three stories high, four bedrooms, and a lot of work ahead of us.
The house had sat vacant for the last twenty years and it showed.

When I took over the care and renovation of this grand lady, we spent a great deal of time and effort to restore this old lady to her original glory.
All the woodwork that had been painted over was stripped of its ugly covering, revealing the beautiful warm natural wood.
The grand staircase that wound around the sides of the main entry hall showcased the skill of the craftsmen that first conceived its design.
Tracking down reproduction wallpaper of the period was a task in itself.
The same with the hardware for the doors and lighting fixtures.

Over the course of seven months, the contractors turned our dream into a reality.
As with most rehabs, there are going to be glitches.
Some of the permits were of the wrong type and needed to be resubmitted.
Supplies would occasionally show up late or not at all.
We had two contractors quit without a good reason.
Both had given vague excuses and left in a hurry.
To finish the job on time, I had to hire outside contractors from another town.
Contractors that never heard stories concerning the history of our house.

History that I would only learn about many months after we moved into our dream house.
Seven months later, the girls and I moved in and began the task of making this our new home and the start of a new life for the three of us.
We went about setting up the house.
A day we never thought would arrive was finally upon us.

Starting with unpacking every moving box, the same boxes we had been living out of for so long.
The girls were a whirlwind of activity.
They had their room set up faster than a traveling carnival setting up for the rubes.

It took a month to get all the boxes emptied, the decor finalized, and the house looking like we had lived there for years.
Along with the house was the task of getting the girls situated in their new school.
A traumatic experience for any child who was removed from their earlier environment and plopped down in a town and school where they didn't know anyone.
However, the girls proved resilient and made new friends quickly.
Added to this, both the girls had a natural tendency to be explorers who found delight in the new and different.

This was a rare evening.
For a change, I had the house to myself.
My girls were spending the weekend with my parents.
Being a single parent was a hell of a lot harder than I first thought.
I knew my wife Jill worked hard at keeping our home warm, safe, and inviting.
And that was just the house.

Add to that the twins, Emily and May, identical twins, so identical even I had trouble telling them apart at times.
However, as their parent, you learn the little things that tell them apart.
The subtle mannerisms that tell them apart.
These "tells" are only visible to those that live with them day after day.
One surefire way for the uninitiated to tell they were talking to May was a scar, she had a little notch on the top of her left ear where our cat's claw had clipped it one day when the girls thought they should give the cat a bath.
It turns out that cats don't generally like getting into the bathtub, go figure.