Gemini

The house had one oddity, the real estate agent told us, but she was sure it wouldn't be a problem: the gas meter for the house next door was located in the basement of the Pink Palace. This, we learned, was an artifact of the houses' former lives/life. The Pink Palace and its neighbor were once brothers and before that, they were one.

Victor Hugo Ehrhardt, who came to town to found the paint company in 1885, built the first house on the double lot at the intersection, just across from the paint factory. Vic raised four children there before he turned the company and the property over to two of them (Cap and Jack, for Hugo had died in early adulthood and Lila had moved to Florida with her banker-husband) in 1916. The materials from the 1885 house were used in the two that now stand side by side, this one apparently for Jack, who "liked things ship-shape" and his wife Frances, who was known as an excellent hostess.

I imagined what Jack and Frances would have said about me and K and our clan and our plans. But our more immediate concern, it would seem, would be neighbors who had heard that city people had made an offer on the house.

The kitchen was painted hubbard squash on the occasion of the baby shower of my very dear friend, by the generosity of her parents. It had been covered in sunflowers, so they texted when they'd finished the task that all was well -- the painting had gone smoothly, and they'd managed to paint around the flowers. Thankfully they were kidding. It's now the loveliest place to sip coffee and write, though the living room, with its tiny library, is the favored place to read.

Why the Pink Palace at Pyme

We used to drive by the Pink Palace, as it came to be known among us for its prior owners' surprising paint choices and the delight they brought our daughters (and perhaps our daughters alone), on the way to the lake. The house had been for sale for too long, and every time we left town my husband or I would say "We could always buy the Pink Palace."

The Pink Palace sits at the only stop light in the town where K's Dad was born and lived before leaving for college, which was also, coincidentally, the hometown of my youth. Dad's family had been there before there was a town proper, and they'd bought a significant swath of property up by Seminary Hill from the McMasters before they themselves divided and sold lots. Dad had been collecting family history documents for years, though he discouraged K from his dream of rebuying Grandma's house (built on part of the original tract of land). "Don't romanticize Grandma's house," he said, before reminding us that lines for gas lamps still ran through the house. Fine, we could always buy the Pink Palace.

Dad had been living with cancer for two years last summer when we had a frank conversation about the near future. A dream-of-a-lifetime trip to Italy behind, what would be ahead? And K said to Mom: "Well, we could always buy the Pink Palace." Glad that I wasn't trying to sell them on my dream of opening a L'Eau Vive franchise in a church that was also for sale, Mom and Dad were in.

The research and restoration and furnishing would take time. But in the next months, the Pink Palace brought us much joy and many surprises.

The Pink Palace in Winter