The House on Teacher's Lane - Part II

Rachel Simon, author of The House on Teacher's Lane: A Memoir of Home, Healing, and Love's Hardest Questions, spoke at The Arts Barn on Wednesday, March 9, 2011 in anticipation of the Kentlands House and Garden Tour in May 2011.

She shared an account of her book, which draws parallels between the personal challenges she and her husband faced in their marital and pre-marital relationship to the taxing process of renovating their 1905, detached townhome in Wilmington, Delaware.

The book chronicles Simon's youth, her troubled relationship with a mother who abandons the family when Rachel is sixteen, her college years and her meeting with her husband-to-be, Hal Dean, who is an architect.

"He wooed me by teaching me about architecture. We lived in Philadelphia at the time, and as we walked around and he explained everything from an architect's career to Jane Jacobs and design principles, I began to realize the influence of the built environment that people have planned. As I fell in love with Hal, I also fell in love with architecture. We lived together for thirteen years without getting married," said Simon during her book talk. "I simply could not committ to marriage."

The remainder of the story recounts Rachel and Hal's painful breakup, Rachel's apprenticeship in love with a surrogate mother, Hal's foray into Buddhism and sustainable architecture, and architecture's triumphant sway over their relationship.

"The house was near Brandywine Creek Park in Wilmington. The environment won me back as much as the person in the environment," said Simon who accompanied her book talk with a Powerpoint presentation with family photographs, photographs of the park and the house—before and after the renovation—and her husband's drawings, including personal doodles, cartoons and architectural documents.

"I moved in and got married as construction had already begun on the house," she commented, as she shared construction photos, including intimate details about a plumbing accident in the bathroom, which left a gaping hole in the floor beside the toilet.

"While for Hal the demolition was exciting, for me it represented the irrevocability of certain decisions," said Simon who reported going into a grieving process during this phase of the renovation. "My husband outsourced the worrying to me."

While their parternship and divison of decision-making tasks made the renovation and marriage a success, Simon sought out the support of a psychotherapist in Palo Alto, California. Rachel Cox specializes in counseling individuals and couples going through home renovations. In her conversations with Cox, Simon realized that renovation parallels a grieving process and that the ideal paradigm in rebuilding—whether houses or relationships—involves a decision-maker and a cheerleader.

"One person makes the decisions, and the other one is there to say, well, isn't that nice," said Simon who has traversed many personal obstacles before getting to this realization.

Reading Simon's book provides insight into the subtleties of this rebuilding journey as well as into the lives of the characters that bring the house on Teacher's Lane to life.

"Forgiveness is a tool for repairing love," said Simon, who is also well-versed in the minute architectural details that make a house a home.    

Simon is also the author of Riding the Bus with My Sister, a memoir which was made into a film starring Rosie O'Donnell and Andi MacDowell in 2005. Her upcoming book The Story of a Beautiful Girl will be available in bookstores and online in May 2011. Unlike how The House on Teacher's Lane focuses on the relationship with her husband, Riding the Bus with My Sister and The Story of a Beautiful Girl explore the world of people with developmental disabilities.  

The book talk was organized by the Kentlands Community Foundation and the Gaithersburg Book Festival, which is also coming up in May. Several book clubs were present in the audience, including Eileen Schlichting's, Cathy Janus's, and Maureen Green's Book Club.

Although all of them have read Simon's book, the book clubs are somewhat of a loose confederation.

"This poses an interesting question for the Foundation and the Book Festival—how to do more outreach to literary groups, when they are so informal," said Schlichting, one of the organizers.

Carrie Dietz, Director of The Kentlands Community Foundation and Councilmember Michael Sesma were also in attendance.

To learn more about Rachel Simon and her books, click here.

To learn more about The Arts Barn, click here.