unwinding

mikey called to tell me that the jcniris house has been sold, paid and delivered --- that was the last house iris built, in 1991, the ninth in 40+ years out of twice that many that they actually lived in since they married a week before pearl harbor in 1941 --- a fine piece of late-twentieth-century vernacular architecture and a great instance of her use of pattern books to get what she wanted --- ugly wart of a house, if you ask me, but everything they wanted: front and center is the garage, its automatic door opener an awesome luxury in their declining years --- tiny little front porch; metal, six-panel door with a very small opening obscured by a leaded panel of stained glass (that i made for them when they moved in) --- too few, too small windows, which didn't matter to iris since, having grown up with kerosene lamps, she would always have the electric lights blazing anyway, even in the middle of the day --- a "sun porch" at the rear that got virtually no sun --- they both died there, which was good since dying-at-home had come to be their main goal in the last few years --- i hope we did right by them with that at least