So no post about the Poteet farmhouse, and what it means to me and my kids, can start without my great-grandfather’s idea about the house. My grandparents had longed to be farmers, and had been searching for a spot for a while. They found this land, about 162 acres (my dad is GUARANTEED to be mad I got the number wrong, but I can never remember the exact acreage!), with a house on it, and bought it back in 1945. This was Erwin and Willa Mae Preston, with one son (Erwin, Jr.) already born and my dad coming a year later. Willa Mae’s dad came to visit, and took a good look around the house. He said, with a sense of humor that my dad inherited down to the delivery, “Nothing wrong with this house, Willa, that a couple of sticks of dynamite couldn’t fix. Throw them into the fireplace, get the stone out of the house, and start over. Then you’ll have a nice home.”

They didn’t do that, and the iron above the door spelling out the builder’s name, a Mr. Sherman, is still there from the late 1800s. My grandparents raised my dad and his brother there, and then moved to the big city of Poteet (“the big shitty,” in my Papaw’s parlance). In my childhood, we visited them in their house in Poteet, just under the strawberry water tower, and only went to the farm to indulgence my dad’s nostalgia. Every time he dragged us out there, he had to debate if he wanted to see his lifelong home or listen to us four girls whine more.

Still, Anna, Carol, Jennei and I had some good times there (specifically driving the ‘tractor’ and the ‘bomb’ car out on the farm …). As a child, I was more connected to my Granny’s house in Pleasanton, but it was sold after her death. In her later years, when I was in college, Mamaw moved to Houston. With both of them gone, and then my move to DC, I didn’t find much reason to go to Poteet, though I still talked about it often.

After I met Jason, I felt compelled, on our very first trip to Houston, to drag him to Poteet to see the farm with Dad and Nancy. As Nancy and I watched in the ‘shade’ of the unairconditioned house, Dad and Jason pulled armpit high weeds in the boiling hot Texas sun, and then we stayed in the old house overnight. Jason left without a really strong positive impression of Poteet.

I however, began to feel more and more nostalgic, and started pressuring my Dad and Nancy to build a new house, or fix up the old one, so we could have a connection in Texas. Inspired (or harangued), dad decided to build a house on the Poteet land next to the house he was raised in. He sold a house he owned in Houston; an architect from his church volunteered to draw up the plans; and the process was begun.

Papaw and Eleanor when we were living there this summer.

The longer I’ve been away from Texas (almost 20 years, now), the more I cling to memories of Poteet and Pleasanton growing up, and the more I want to offer my children some of those rural, running around crazy memories. Dad and Nancy, and their investment in building and maintaining this new farmhouse — not to mention helping us with our tickets to fly there every.single.time — have provided that opportunity.

Ever since Allyson was wee (less than 1) and Oliver was just slightly less wee, we’ve been going to Poteet. At first, it was just to look at the foundation and let the kids play in the piles of sawdust. Then it was to set up the house, buying dishes and beds and artwork. And then, in a very unexpected twist last year, it became a temporary home for our family as we decided where we would go after a short sojourn in New York City ended quite ignominiously.

Driving up with our trusty Honda and enormous moving van to our home-away-from-home in Poteet provided us with all the welcome that we needed. The kids — even baby Eleanor — start to unbuckle their seat belts as soon as we turn onto the land, and Oliver knows how to unlock the gate. We round the bend, and the new farmhouse and old farmhouse come into view, framed in glorious Texas light.

Oliver and Allyson, watering Dad’s beloved oak trees that he grew from ACORNS that he gathered down by the creek.

Dad and Nancy, and Mamaw and Papaw before them, were incredibly generous to create this home for us, this place, this land that we can walk as heroes, even when we feel quite downtrodden by life. That first breath of air, that first Shiner Bock on the front porch of the old house, that first glimpse of our boots waiting on the fireplace for us to return … this is our home, no matter how far we roam. And I am incredibly grateful to my Dad and Nancy for investing in it for us.

We aren’t living there now, but you will find us there for large chunks of time every year: breathing in the air, complaining about the ‘neighbors’ and checking out Poteet’s barbecue and breakfast tacos every six months or so. Thanks, Dad and Nancy, for the love and the safety we always find in Poteet.