We Are... Our Grandparents!

I shouldn't let September slip away without noting a remarkable (for the Barat family, that is) fact.  Our family has now possessed our home in north Wilmington, DE for 45 years.  As a four-year-old in September 1967, I literally saw the old manse built before my as-yet-uncorrected-for-myopia eyes.  My brother Andy and his family live there now.  What's remarkable about our family's longevity at this address is that now, we have lived there longer than my grandparents lived in their home in Worcester, MA.

     The Lee home, circa 2002

You know the old saying that time moves more slowly when you are a kid.  Well, when I was growing up and making regular visits to Worcester, I got the distinct vibe that my relatives had lived there FOREVER.  The house itself certainly seemed old enough to be a domicile that could house a certain group of people for an indeterminate length of time.  I can still smell the mildewed wood of the small "mud room" that one had to pass through in order to enter the house proper.  But, no, the Lee family was "only" there from 1945 until the end of the 1980s, when my grandfather, great-aunt, and aunt moved in with my uncle and aunt's family in New Hampshire.  The Barat estate in Wilmington has now been in the family longer.