A Blessing to Four Generations

A huge part of this family's history is up for sale. I was asked to write a short history of the house, as recommended by the Realtor, who said buyers may want to get an understanding of the home's emotional ties. My brief, one-page history is below.

The Lake House:  a blessing to four generations

            Four generations of this family owe a great debt to M.P. “Pat” Witherington, a World War II Navy officer and then a CPA in Statesville, who selected a waterfront lot off Morrison Farm Road in 1964 before Lake Norman was filled. He stood at the edge of the unpaved and unnamed road and knew it was the perfect spot with one of the finest views of any place on the north end of the new lake. Pat, who grew up near waterways in eastern North Carolina, chose a lot at the end of a protected cove with a miles-long view of the lake. At first, his family of his wife, Harriett, and four children enjoyed the water and the view on weekend adventures involving tents, a picnic table and lots of relatives and friends. Pat and Harriett loved it so much, they decided to sell their home in Statesville and build a new home at the lake.

            The house was completed in 1967, and the family moved to the lake permanently. Each teenager had her own bedroom, and all the children grew up on the water, boating, swimming, water skiing and watching new homes appear as lake living grew more popular. Sometimes, Pat would get home from a long day at the office and immediately take a quick swim off the dock.

            In 1972, by-then-widowed Pat remarried, and he moved to his new bride’s home in Statesville. For the now mostly grown children, The Lake House, as it had come to be known, would always be home. Pat kept the Lake House as a gathering spot for his children, their spouses and their children and grandchildren. Second generation families spent their vacations and special weekends at The Lake House. Each new generation fell in love with the house and the water and the heritage and history the house represented.

            The extended family continued to gather at The Lake House over the decades for Thanksgiving, Christmas, graduation celebrations, weddings, childbirths and other special occasions. The original siblings, scattered by careers, would all gather at the lake with their children, which forced some crowded sleeping arrangements but resulted in immutable memories. The third-generation cousins would form a Cousins Club and conspire to play tricks on their parents or produce talent shows for them, and those precious moments would return two decades later, when the fourth-generation children formed the same group dynamics during vacations at The Lake House.

            Each generation has found solace at The Lake House. During times of discord or crisis, they could escape to the lake to sit on the porch and look out across the water. Whether the lake sparkled with sunlight or roiled with an approaching rainstorm inching its way toward the cove, the second-floor porch was the spot to see nature’s beauty and to feel all tensions and worries drain away. If the weather was too cold for porch sitting, the living room fireplace could provide nearly as effective emotional healing.

            When Pat died in 2010, he left The Lake House to his children, who cherished it as the greatest bequest they could ever receive, and they and their children and grandchildren continued to enjoy the lake. Sadly, the expense of maintaining the house and the distance from their primary homes made keeping the house indefinitely an impossible dream. The calming, relaxing, ideal spot will have to bless another family.

Thanksgiving over the years

On this Monday of Thanksgiving week, my thoughts are fixed on the week's worth of work that must be done in three days at the office. With a little extra effort and wise use of time, I should be able to handle that challenge.

Getting Thursday and Friday off, and enjoying the presence of my children and six grandchildren will make the early week rush worthwhile. Our younger daughter has agreed to host the gathering of extended family at her home in Greenville — a site farther east than any of the alternatives, but her home is spacious and can handle the cacophony whirling, laughing, running cousins, all under age 10.

Thanksgiving has become my favorite holiday, despite a dearth of celebration when I was growing up. The textile mill where my mother worked did not close for Thanksgiving, which meant that she worked and we children fended for ourselves throughout the Thursday off from school. If the weather was clear and mild, I would head into the woods to explore and pretend, lost in nature and the refreshing, soothing impact of seasonal change, which I did not yet truly appreciate.

The first Thanksgiving after we married, my wife exposed me to her family Thanksgiving tradition, a welcoming of aunts, uncles and cousins into the modest house by the lake. Only five months earlier, her mother had died unexpectedly in that house, still in her forties, never to enjoy her grandchildren or see her children graduate college or (except for the one I stole away too early) marry.

It fell upon my bride, just 19, to preside over the small kitchen, to cook the turkey, to arrange the table, to serve as hostess for more than a dozen guests. My admiration of her capabilities and skills, already high, rose higher as the day progressed. She substituted marvelously for the woman whose absence was so much on her mind. She was determined to live up to her mother's example, and she did so brilliantly.

In 42 Thanksgivings since then, we have often hosted dinner for family — and occasionally, friends — and each time she has provided the welcome and the sustenance everyone needed. A photo album she pulled out over the weekend chronicles the holidays. The first photos are of that first Thanksgiving, in black-and-white. More recent color photos remind us of other Thanksgivings at the lake house or in homes we claimed for a few years or many, with a changing cast of relatives but usually including my parents or hers. One slightly forlorn year, our crowd was only four — our two children still at home and ourselves — but we dressed up and cooked as if for a crowd

This year, we will not be hosts, but we will preside, in a sense, as patriarch and matriarch of the gathering — a reminder that we are older, substantially so, than our parents were at that first Thanksgiving after our wedding. "All of life's a circle," and we are spinning rapidly toward the next phase of the cycle.

Of all the things I have to be thankful for, memories of a life together are among the best.