6790 Obispo

6790 Obispo Ave Long Beach, CA 90805 That house has been in my family for almost 70 years. My Grandpa and Grandma bought the little house way back when they first got married, and the twenty acres surrounding it. My Grandpa built most of the current house himself, and its rather large now. Over the years they raised their three daughters, my Aunts Gloria and Janet and my mom. They had their first dates, prom, Christmases and all those other growing up experiences in that house. As time went on most of my family has lived in that house at one time or another. My mom moved back in when I was in 5th grade, I lived there with my brother every other year until high school, when I decided to stay. I've called every room in that house my bedroom at some point, painted the walls different colors more than once. I remember using the sheets to make a fort under the dining room table with my cousins. The same table that has been in that dining room since before I was born, the table all of our holiday dinners have been eaten on for as long as I can remember. I believe that table moved with my brother to his new house. Its the house I called home when Ashley was born, having repainted her room a pretty yellow. While my brother was in college it was a bachelor pad, you treaded carefully, not sure exactly what might be growing in the corners and always brought your own toilet paper because college boys had interesting hygiene habits. As kids we played in the yard, explored the garage and its many hiding places, there was a tree house in the big tree out front, until we had to cut the tree down because the roots were disrupting the plumbing. I remember how the house always smelled the same whenever I came back from being away for a while. I've crawled through the attic and the crawl space under the house. When my brother got married, it was the house he brought his wife home to. Thankfully that caused my Grandpa to replace the olive green carpet that had been in the house since the 60's. We were all sad to see the familiar, holy, worn carpet go, but defiantly glad to have something less that 40 years old to walk on. My brother finally bought his first house and moved in back in August. Since then my husband has been helping give the house a much needed face lift, with new tile in the bathrooms and kitchen, freshening the carpet and what not. My Grandpa is living there alone for the first time ever, on his way to living at the nearby retirement home as soon as an apartment is available for him. When he moves the house will be sold. I have known that is why Gary has been fixing the old place up, but it got me thinking last night about everything that house has seen, everything it has meant to our family. Am I weird to feel sad that we are letting it go? It will feel strange not to go down for Christmas there. We all have keys to the back door and everybody comes and goes regularly, I don't think I've seen somebody knock to enter since I was a kid. I wonder if the new family who buys it will wonder about the history of the place?