[title subtitle=”words: Stoney Stamper
Images: courtesy April and Stoney Stamper”][/title]
Several years ago, April bought me a small sign for my office that said, “Never be so busy making a living, that you forget to make a life.” I can’t imagine a more fitting adage for yours truly. I spent a dozen years doing precisely what that small wooden sign told me not to. I spent all of my time, all of my life, chasing the almighty dollar. I was so consumed with becoming successful, that I never even realized my life was passing me by. But thankfully, one day April came along, dragging two little girls behind her, and they changed my world. They changed everything I thought I knew about life. And they also introduced me to what would become my favorite simple pleasure. Coming home.
…to me, it was perfect. My safe place. My happy place. And still to this day, when I think about my home,
I think of that little brick house on Murphy Road.
Let me back up a little bit. I grew up in a great home. We were your normal little happy family of five from middle America. We had a three bedroom, two bath house just across the pasture from both sets of grandparents. Aunts, uncles, and cousins lined both sides of Murphy Road in both directions. We were a close family, and Murphy, Oklahoma was our home. A great home.
It’s funny the things that we remember from our childhood. When I think of that little house, even though I haven’t lived there in twenty years, I can still hear the screech of the woodstove doors as my dad loaded it up with firewood before we all went to bed. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I’d hear my mom try to open the stove quietly so she could add more firewood without waking anyone up.
And if you went into the bedroom that I shared with my brother, you could look at the trim around the door frame and see how tall I was every year since I was six years old. Nearly every good memory I have as a child is in that house. No, in that home. My parents worked very hard to give me, my sister, and my brother a happy home. And they nailed it. Looking back on it now, it wasn’t the nicest house I’d ever been in. It had its quirks. It had this ugly blue linoleum in the kitchen and dining room for years. The toilet made some really funny sounds. And we didn’t finish the back patio for a long time, so it had concrete blocks stacked up to the backdoor doubling as steps. The funny thing is, I didn’t notice any of those things as a kid. I only notice them now, looking back. It never crossed my mind that it wasn’t the nicest home in town, because, to me, it was perfect. My safe place. My happy place. And still to this day, when I think about home, I think of that little brick house on Murphy Road.
In 1997, I left for college, and I never really came back. I began my own journey and lived on my own. In college, I lived in dorms. And then upgraded to a nicer duplex on a golf course where I split the rent with three others. It wasn’t a mansion, but for a nineteen-year-old kid trying to figure out what he wanted to do with his life, 125 West Golf Drive in Stillwater, Oklahoma, seemed like a pretty damn good start. From there, I moved to an apartment on the lake in Cleveland, and then finally, I bought my first house. It was a small farm just around the corner from my parents and grandparents. It was a cute little house, and I was proud of it. That year, I also took a new job that required me to travel. And I traveled a lot. It was not uncommon for me to be gone 250+ days per year. That is not very conducive to any kind of home life. My “life” was spent in airports, hotels, and the driver’s seat of rental cars. During that time, I moved often. I moved to Florida and had a beautiful condo on the beach. It had three balconies overlooking the Gulf Coast. I was single then. My only companion my old Australian Shepherd named Doc. From there, I moved to Richmond, Virginia, and still I traveled the country—on the road seven days out of ten. I bought a beautiful house in a little town outside of Richmond named Midlothian. It was in a great neighborhood with good people all around. The house was beautiful. But as I’m oft to do, after about five years there, I packed up and headed back to Oklahoma, only to buy another house there. Another beautiful house. Again, I was fairly proud of it, but as with all the others, there was something missing. They were all beautiful houses. I made many improvements on them, built new decks and patios, put in new tile floors. I liked the houses, but I never had the feeling that I had when I was in that little brick house on Murphy Road.
This is the point in this story when April and the girls come in. April and I had known each other since childhood, had reconnected, started dating and then later, decided to get married. April had two daughters, Abby and Emma, so I was now going to be a family man. And a good family man can’t travel 250+ days per year. So I took a job in Texas that wouldn’t require me to travel anymore. Yes, it was a terribly difficult decision to move our family, but ultimately, we felt it was best for us.
When we decided to buy a new house, finding one with land and a barn for the horses was pretty sparse. But April found one. It had seven good acres, a four-stall barn with a tack room, and a nice sized arena built out of solid pipe. That sounds great, huh? Well, yes and no. The house was a fixer-upper. Fences needed to be built, and the barn needed new siding. It was a project. But once we were done with it, the value of the property would double, at least. To us, it was worth the sacrifice. We went for it, and for two years now, we have worked. We have tried to put as much sweat equity as we could into this house, and it’s turned out pretty nice. At the very least, I’m no longer embarrassed to have company over. But most important, this house has the one thing I had been looking for, for more than twenty years. When I walk in that door at the end of a long workday, I set my briefcase down. Our youngest daughter Gracee runs to me with her arms open wide, Abby and Emma tell me funny stories about their day, and April stands at the end of the line, waiting to give me a kiss and welcome me home. Man, there’s no better feeling on this earth. And yes, that’s right. I said home. A house is not necessarily a home. I have had lots of houses. But this is my home.
Stoney Stamper is the author of the popular parenting blog, The Daddy Diaries. He and his wife April have three daughters: Abby, Emma and Gracee. Originally from northeast Oklahoma, the Stampers now live in Tyler, Texas. For your daily dose of The Daddy Diaries, visit Stoney on Facebook or on his website, thedaddydiaries.net.
