This old house: Where we sleep, eat, and pile up memories

Later this month, we will celebrate having lived in our house for 22 years.

We moved in on July 19, 2003. I remember the exact date because...well, because I remember dates like that. There are vast expanses of my brain crammed with dates and details I really don't need taking up space perhaps better filled by more practical information.

I also remember that day because it was my friend Kevin's birthday, and while he has nothing to do with this story, I still equate move-in day with Kev's birthday.

Anyway, 22 years is in some ways a long time and in others not so long at all. My mom lived in her house on Harding Drive for 56 years. And I know lots and lots of people who have been in their homes nearly that long.

Still, it feels like Terry, the kids, and I have always been here at 30025 Miller Avenue. When we took occupancy of the house, Elissa was 9, Chloe was 6, Jared was a few weeks away from turning 5, and little Melanie was still two months from turning 3.

Jack wasn't even a thought yet.

The house has hosted graduation parties, countless birthday celebrations, our 25th anniversary shindig back in 2017, and a whole lot of visits and sleepovers involving family and friends.

I've cut the grass 8 million times (or so it feels). And I think Terry has pulled an even higher number of weeds from the flower beds.

It's the house to which we brought Jack when he was born in 2006. It's the place where we watched all of the kids grow up.

And for now, it's the place where Terry and I intend to spend at least a few more years, if not several.

When you're in your mid-50s and still able to get around well, you don't often think about stairs, for example, being much of an issue. But in 20 or 30 years, if we're still in the house, they very well could be. We have both an upstairs and a basement, and we travel between them regularly.

Interestingly, by the end of this year, our current house will be the place where I've lived the longest in my life. I spent the first 22 years and 4 months of my existence living on Harding Drive before Terry and I bought our first house in 1992.

It gets to a point that even if you decide you want to sell your home, you can't imagine anyone else living there after you. I still feel that way about the place on East 300th Street where Terry and I spent the first 11 years of our marriage. Three different families have lived there in the two decades since we moved out, but part of me still thinks of that house as ours and the others as just renters.

In the end, there's an obvious difference between a house (essentially a container for your stuff) and a home (a place where you always feel warm, welcome, and safe).

I would like to think we've created a nice little home on the southern edge of Wickliffe over 22 years filled with love, light and fond memories.

Someone needs to be in charge of restocking paper products in your house. In our family, it's me.

Every house has a variety of jobs, big and small, that over time fall on the shoulders of one occupant or another. As comedian Paul Reiser once observed, these are often jobs that nobody especially likes, but one of you happens to hate it a little less than the other, so the job goes to that person.

Among my many assigned duties at 30025 Miller Avenue are two tasks I take seriously. They are in no way onerous, and I actually enjoy them both.

One is changing the clocks twice a year whenever Daylight Savings Time begins or ends. With so many of our time-keeping devices now fully digital, this isn't nearly the job it used to be, but there are still clocks that need to be manually adjusted (the stove, the microwave, the coffeemaker, Terry and Jack's cars, etc.)

The other is making sure we have paper towels in the kitchen and plenty of toilet paper in each of our bathrooms.

Ideally, you should never get to the empty cardboard tube inside the paper towels or a roll of toilet paper without a replacement readily at hand.

Thus, I'm always glancing into the kitchen and various bathrooms to gauge current supply levels and the precise moment when I will need to go to our basement storage room to procure fresh stocks.

Running out of paper towels isn't a national emergency or anything, just inconvenient.

But running out of toilet paper when it's urgently needed? That simply cannot happen.

And it rarely does, though I will admit there have been times when I haven't been quick enough with reinforcements and someone will yell for help from the bathroom.

I would submit that, if you're planning to do something in the bathroom that will require toilet paper, you should first determine if there is sufficient paper on hand before you begin. But I know that sometimes you're simply in a hurry.

Overall, though, I am probably the best choice in our family for this job, as I am detail-oriented and generally very conscientious, even when it comes to things about which you probably don't need to be especially conscientious.

No one appreciates the toilet paper guy until they're in desperate need. Then, and only then, he becomes the most important person in the house.

It's already to the point that I can't clearly remember when the kids all lived at home

I used to live with all of these people. Just don't ask me about the details.

It's not like Terry and I are 80 years old or anything. We're not even officially empty nesters yet.

But to my surprise, I have trouble remembering the days when all seven members of our family lived together at 30025 Miller Avenue. The last time it happened, I think, was 2015. Maybe 2016.

Which for the math-impaired isn't even a decade ago.

Yet things get blurry when I try to recall what the mornings were like, or how we all squeezed in around the kitchen table for dinner. I was at work quite a bit of the time, of course, but I was there enough that I should be clearer on the details.

What I do remember is general chaos most of the time. Sports, band, church activities, movie nights, sleepovers, vacations. It was great, but it has all run together in my increasingly addled mind.

It's the small-but-important details that have escaped my brain. Who slept in which room? Who left the house first in the morning? At what age did they start spending more time with their friends than with us? Were Terry and I the only ones who woke up for late-night infant feedings, or did the newborns also awaken their siblings?

It's all a jumbled mass that has separated itself into two broad periods of time: the years when Elissa, Chloe, Jared and Melanie lived with us (1994 to 2022) and the years when it has just been Terry, Jack and me in the house (2022 to the present).

The particulars are increasingly fuzzy.

Naturally, this effect is most pronounced with my 30-year-old daughter Elissa. I know she lived with us for the first 20 or so years of her life, and I remember many individual moments and milestones, but the day to day is indistinct.

What did she eat for breakfast? How often did she hang out in the living room and talk with us? Where did she do her homework?

You got me. I was there, but I just can't recall much of it.

I would feel much better if other middle-aged parents consoled me with tales of their own kid-related amnesia. Otherwise, I can only conclude that my cognitive decline is accelerating and I am that much closer to being a drooling mess who can't even remember yesterday, let alone 10 years ago.

Just because I go into the office five days a week doesn't mean anybody else has to

This is my office at Materion. I spend a lot of time here (and I like it).

Back in December I had a post here about how much I enjoyed my company's hybrid arrangement of working three days in the office and two days at home each week.

Let's pretend I never wrote that.

Actually, I still stand behind every word I said, particularly how smart it is for companies to give their employees flexible working options that make life a little more manageable, at least when compared with the old non-negotiable approach of five days in the office for those of us in the white collar world.

For the last five months, however, I have been coming into the office every day, Monday through Friday, of my own volition.

There have been a couple of exceptions, but the most part, I commute to work five days a week like it's still 2019.

This is completely my choice. I do it for me and not as an attempt to suggest to others that they, too, should be back in the office full time.

They shouldn't be. They should be doing whatever works best for them and their employers.

It's just that, for me, the office is the one place where I am most focused on the task at hand. It's not that I can't be productive from my home office, but that, on balance, I get more done at Materion corporate headquarters than I do working upstairs at 30025 Miller Avenue.

The one person I supervise, Courtney, knows I do this, and more importantly, she knows I don't expect her in any way to follow my lead. She has a little boy at home to take care of. It's just easier and better for everyone involved when she can work from home at least a few days a week.

(It doesn't hurt that she's very smart and talented and would be just as productive if we gave her a laptop, a rechargeable battery and a tent and sent her out in the middle of the woods to work.)

The point is, my Materion office is my favorite place to work. I love it on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays when my co-workers are in the office with me and I can collaborate and converse with them, and I love it just as much on Mondays and Fridays when the parking lot is nearly empty and only a few of us are onsite.

My work schedule, my choice. Your results may (and really should) vary.