I recently got back from a visit to the city I was born and raised in. My sister and her family still reside in Knoxville, Tennessee and I hadn’t been back there in years. But one of my nieces and my nephew have been “fruitful and multiplied” so I had three babies to meet; twin 18-month old toddlers and a 6-month old roly-poly.
Whenever I go back there, I always set aside time for a “grand tour” of sorts. I drive by the two homes I owned when I lived there. I also visit my parents graves and the house I helped my mom build where she spent her final years.
I also always drive past the house I grew up in. This was both a shock, but also not a surprise.
I grew up in what might be called “the wrong side of the tracks” in Knoxville. I like the analogy because our house was right across the street from the train tracks. Like many sounds that many people might consider a distraction, it had been there my whole upbringing, so I didn’t really even hear the train anymore by the time I went away to college. Anyway, suffice it to say it was a poorer neighborhood. But it was fine. The old farmhouse sat on about an acre of land. Land I had the great “honor” of mowing from the time I was about 12 years old.
When my mom sold the house in 2003, it was in decent shape. But over the years, the person that bought the house didn’t really keep it up. It had been 7 years since I had been in Knoxville and while I expected the house to be in some form of disrepair, I didn’t expect what I saw.
That house? I’m telling ya… its gonna fall down. It’s a mess. And the acre of land? Well no need to mow that. It’s so overgrown with bushes and trees that there’s nowhere left for grass. You can barely see the house anymore. But what you can see – Holy cow. I can’t believe people are still living there.
As I pondered that, I couldn’t help but be drawn back to my current home in Denver. When I purchased it, you also couldn’t see the house from the street. It was so covered up with growth that the house disappeared. It was basically just a roof floating on trees and gigantic juniper bushes. To give you a clue, when I met my (quite wonderful) neighbors, one of their first questions of me was “what are you doing to do about the front yard?”
It was a legit question.
And yet, what was behind that whole mess was a little French styled cottage. A charming home that just desperately needed light and a fresh perspective and a new lease on life. I mean, who among us doesn’t also need that?
And maybe that’s the deeper message I took home with me—both from Knoxville and from the overgrown garden that used to be my front yard here in Denver. Sometimes we all get a little hidden by life. Covered up by old stories, tangled memories, or the simple weight of time. But beneath it all, there’s still something beautiful. Something worth tending to.