MAKE A HOUSE A HOME

by Marvin Bowers
for the Chip Lyeth Paper Group
December 3, 1993
Next week, if everything works out as planned, Bonnie and I will be moving
from St Paul's Rectory, where we have lived for almost twenty years, into a
house located at the southeast corner of East and Tucker.

At the same time, my

mother, who is a widow in her late seventies, will be moving from Napa, where
she has lived since 1946 and where I grew up, into a house located next door to
the house into which Bonnie and I will move.

This is a fairly big deal, partly

because at the age of forty-nine I will be moving into a "house of my own" for
the first time.

It's also a fairly big deal because I feel that it is a turning point

in the story of my life.

It is a turning point because my mother will be living

next door and I presumably will be looking after her for the rest of her life.
It is a turning point because when our children move out over the next couple
of years it will be just Bonne and me living together in "our house".

So the

house, or rather houses, at the corner of East and Tucker will be the homes of
adults with grown, out-on-their-own children and an aging mother/mother-in-law.
Finally, it is a turning point because it may well be the house I live in until my
death.
Bonnie and I came to Healdsburg in 1972. I was 27 and Bonnie was 24.
was two and Mary was a infant.
were sent here by a bishop.

Sarah

We did not chose to come to Healdsburg, we

It is also true that the lay leaders and members

of St Paul's Church did not chose to have us come here, they were simply told
by a bishop that we were coming.

We had been living for not quite three years

in Calistoga were we had been very happy.

There we lived for the first time in

a real house, rather than in student housing.

To that house we brought home

from the St Helena Hospital our first two children. We did not particularly want

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to leave Calistoga, but we were not unhappy to be coming to Healdsburg, which
certainly seemed to be a nice enough town.

It has turned out to be a very nice

town for us, but the beginning was not promising, the beginning was, in fact,
a nightmare.
During our first two years in Healdsburg we lived in three houses.
The first house was a solid, spacious two story house on Matheson Street,
which the church had rented for a number of years from a well know local
family.

Bonnie and I both thought it was a wonderful place.

My predecessor

had lived in the house and Bonnie and. I assumed it would be our home, too, for
as long as we lived in Healdsburg.

I don't know about Bonnie, but even though

it was a wonderful house, I certainly never got the chance to feel at home in
that house.

The troubles with the parish, or rather with a few people in the

parish started almost immediately.

The troubles focused on sermons, worship

services, the arrangement of furniture in my office, etc, etc.

was that Bonnie and I were who we were.

We were young .

The real problem

We had kids in

diapers. Bonnie sometimes wore jeans and bikinis. We had a kind of beat up car
with a McGovern sticker on it.

At any rate there were a couple of very

-determined people in the congregation who made up there minds that we had to
go.
We moved into the solid, spacious two story house on Matheson Street in April
of 1972.

We received an eviction notice by registered mail in November.

couldn't believe it.

All through high school, college, seminary and in my first

parish I had been kind of a fair haired boy, destined to do good things, and
pretty much liked by everybody. Now there were some people--Church people-who did not like me one bit, nor my wife, nor my babies, nor my car. They were
going to run me out of town.

I was sure then, and am sure now, that the

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leaders of my congregation were instrumental in getting the owners of the old,
spacious two story house on Matheson Street to evict us.
The second house we lived in was a three bedroom tract-type house on Powell
Ave. We moved in mid-December of '72. We moved ourselves with very little help
from anyone in the parish or the community.
Madeleine.

I remember it being unusually cold .

Bonnie was pregnant with

It was not a nice time.

The

three bedroom tract-type house of Powell Ave was owned by a member of the
parish who was one of the people most actively involved in trying to get rid of
me.

This may seem somewhat contradictory and as a matter fact it was.

But its

just one of those things that sometimes happens when people are obstinate.
I was obstinate.

And

After feeling very , very sorry for myself and wanting to call

the bishop and say, "They're being mean to me.

They're not nice people.

Please, bishop, send me to a nice parish with nice people", I got mad and decide d
I was going to stay if for no other reason than that "they" didn't want me to

stay.
I liked the neighborhood in which the three bedroom tract- type house on
Powell Ave was located. There were lots of young families with little kids. There
were no Episcopalians in the neighborhood, so everyone was friendly.

But I

certainly never felt at home in that house . When your landlord is trying to run
you out of town with religious zeal it is not conducive to homeyness. I think we
lived on Powell Ave for ten months.

I remember a great Easter party an d I

remember a running toilet overflowing while we were away for a day and ruining
the hardwood floors . It was my fault because I had left a diaper in the running
toilet. I paid Ralph Holden, who lived up the street, to plane and sand the floors
and put the carpet back and I never told the landlords and I feel guilty about
it to this day.

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In the summer of '73.

St Paul's received a bequest from the estate of Harold

and Esther Vanderhust, long time members of the parish.

a house on Johnson Street.

The bequest included

It was a funky old place that was really not big

enough for Bonnie and me, three small children, and a teenage foster child.

With

the support of the bishop and a small group of loyalists in the parish, the
decision was made to tear down an old house owned by the parish and located
next to the parish hall, to sell the house on Johnson Street, and to build a
proper rectory.
Even though there was some serious opposition to the plan, including a guy
who informed the driver of the ready-mix truck who came to pour the foundation
that, "This house will never be finished" .

The house was finished.

it could be finished, we were evicted from the house on Powell Ave.

But before
This was

the last ditch effort to get rid of us before we had a secure house to live in.
We were rescued by the Episcopal Franciscans who at that time managed the
Bishop's Ranch, a camp and conference facility on Westside Road.
Kip Cottage at the Bishop's Ranch in the late fall of 1973.

We moved into

Kip Cottage was not

intended for a family residence but as a summer cabin for two or three families
to share at once.

I think it had four bedrooms, a rather institutional kitchen,

and a great big front room with a linoleum floor heated by one of those little
modern, metal fire places that looked kind of like sputnik. The brothers not only
gave us (or rather rented to us at a very reasonable rate) a place to live for
the winter, they became our allies against the bad guys in the parish and our
best friends.
However, we and the Franciscans were told in no uncertain terms by the
diocese that we would have to be out of Kip Cottage well before the beginning
of the summer program at Bishop's Ranch.

So the race was on to see whether

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Ralph Holden, the same guy who fixed the floor in the house on Powell Ave, could
complete the construction of the rectory during the winter and before we got
evicted for the third time in two years.
Ralph did it, God bless him.

Bonnie and I moved into St Paul's Rectory on

Easter Day, 1974. We had a house that we both believed could be our home.

The

good guys had won and the bad guys had lost. I was going to keep my job and
I had a house to make a home.
The nineteen plus years that we have lived in the rectory. have been the
years in which I have come of middle age.

I was twenty-nine when we moved

in. Bonnie was twenty-six, Sarah five, Mary three, Maddy one. Even though the
back yard was a big pile of dirt, we had a party.

The Franciscans came and so

did the increasing number of people in the parish who were beginning to accept
Bonnie and me as their own.

I guess what I remember most about the rectory

as my home is the parties, the kids, and the fights.

Bonnie and I had some

wonderful parties, especially in the earlier years. The ones I liked best were the
ones at which we sang.

People would bring food and drink and it would all be

put out on the table and we would eat and drink and sing.

We sang hymns, we

sang Gilbert and Sullivan, we sang madrigals, we sang Handel's

Arthur was born in the summer of '76.

Bonnie and I moved from the large

bedroom into the middle-sized of the three bedrooms.

shared the large bedroom.
Arthur's nursery.

"Messiah".

Sarah, Mary and Maddy

The small bedroom, that had been Sarah's, became

Clare's conception came as a happy surprise to me and as a

considerably less than happy surprise to Bonnie.

We had not planned to have

any more children after Arthur . Friends were very loving to us and the vestry
of the parish added a room onto the house.

Ralph Holden came up with a plan

for what became a new master bedroom and a little sitting room upstairs. In the

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sitting room we, Bonnie and I and the five kids, spent some of our happiest
hours watching TV of all things. On Sunday evenings we would have champagne,
soft drinks, trail mix, gummi bears, raisinettes and goobers, pate and toast.
Bonnie would spread a sheet on the carpet so everyone could spill.
crowded into the upstairs sitting room and watched the muppets.
would leave and Bonnie and I would watch Masterpiece Theater.

We all

Then the kids

Those were the

years of Barchester Towers, I Claudius, the funny series about some ascendancy
English types in Ireland, and Brideshead Revisited.
I believe that both Bonnie and I love our children.

The children are

nevertheless and/or therefore what we have fought about most consistently and
most painfully over the years.
outbursts of temper.

I have been, to my shame, very much given to

I have never struck Bonnie or the children but I have

shouted and thrown things and broken things.

Shortly after we moved into the

rectory I put my fist through the sheet rock upstairs three times in rapid
succession.

It is sheer luck that I did not hit a stud which, had I have done,

would have certainly broken my hand.

I called my old friend Ralph Holden and

told him some repairs were needed. When he saw the three shoulder height holes
he

kn~

immediately how they had gotten there.

I said, "Fine."
Ralph."
Ralph .

He said, "How's your hand?"

He said, "You're lucky you didn't hit a stud."

I said, "I know

He said, "Tch, tch, tch," and wagged his finger at me.

I said, "I know

Just fix it."

I was very happy during those years--'74 through the mid-80's.

was happy, I assumed that Bonnie and the kids were happy.
not to be the case.

Because I

That turned out

As the kids got older I had more and more conflict with

them and more and more conflict with their mother about them.
things you're supposed to do.

We did all the

We talked to each other and our friends.

We

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prayed. We involved ourselves in counseling and therapy. It wasn't all bad, but
the parties at the rectory pretty much stopped, fun times as a family got fewer
and farther between, and the fights gofmore and more frequent if less volatile

....,

in terms of me shQ4fting and throwing things.

One of the things we found out

was that we were Y7rong in assuming that if I would control my temper and stop
yelling and throwing things, we would be able to resolve our conflicts and have
peace at home .

When I stopped yelling and throwing things our basic emotional

and ideological conflicts became even clearer and our home even less peaceful.
The saddest year of my life was 1991.
June and July of that year.
rectory.
Clare.

The s addest two months of my life were

During those two months I lived alone in the

Bonnie moved into a rented house on Healdsburg Ave with Arthur and
Sarah and Mary were away at college.

Maddy stayed sometimes with

Bonnie, sometimes with friends , and occasionally with me. But mostly I was alone .
Even though I was preparing to resign from the ministry and move to who
knows where, I decided t o go up the Fallen Leaf Lake for what I as sumed would
be my last vacation there . ro my great joy, Bonnie decided to join me and when
the vacation was over, it was decided that we would once again try living
together in the same house.
In the two years since then, both Clare and Arthur have left home, Clare to
attend Verde Valley School in Sedona, Arizona, and Arthur to live in San
Francisco and paint and study painting.

Maddy still lives at home but she is

clearly making her own life and will be out of our house soon.
The house at the corner of Tucker and East into which we will move was lived
in for many years by a couple who loved the house and took very good care of
it.

They have died and the house is being sold to us by their children who

clearly have very fond memories of their parents in the house. When they were

page eight
talking to the realtor representing Bonnie and me about our offer and about
financing and inspections and surveys and on and on, one of them asked the
realtor if he could get the Bowers to make a promise.

"Ask them," he said, "to

promise to love the house as much as our parents did."

I hope we can make and

keep that promise.

I hope we will love the house and make it a home in which

we can love each other, perhaps in ways that we have never loved each other
before. I hope, too, that it will be a house in which our adult children and their
loved ones will feel that they are welcomed and loved.

This will not be easily

done, because whatever else we have been and are, Bonnie and the kids and I
are not easy people to live with in the same house, or even to visit with in the
same house.
Thinking of Bonnie and me in that house at the corner of East and Tucker
and how it might become our home for the next twenty or so years, maybe until
we are parted by death, I think of this prayer from the Book of Tobit.

"When

they were left alone and the door was shut, Tobias rose from the bed and said
to Sarah, 'Get up, my love; let us pray and beseech our Lord to show us mercy
and keep us safe.' Tobias said:
thy name for ever and ever.

'We praise thee, 0 God of our fathers, we praise

Let the heavens and all thy creation praise thee

for ever. Thou madest Adam, and Eve his wife to be his helper and support; and
those two were the parents of the human rac e.

This was thy word:

good for the man to be alone; let us make him a helper like him."
this my beloved wife, not out of lus t but in true marriage.
I may find mercy and grow old together.'

"It is not
I now take

Grant that she and

They both said 'Amen', and then they

went to bed for the night."

It takes a heap of living to make a house a home; a heap of living and loving,
a heap of fighting and forgi.ving, a heap of going to bed for the night and

,.
page nine
getting up in the morning, a heap of being together and at least a bit of being
apart to make a house a home.
So, how about you and your houses and homes?