Today we got an offer on our house. It’s been for sale for a
few months and we dropped the price, had a bunch of open houses, staged it like
they say to do in the magazines and waited. It finally worked this week and we
received an offer. The offer was lower than we wanted but we accepted it
anyway. This is the second time that we had our house on the market; it seems
not too many people are interested in classic (older) colonial homes with lots
of charm (not an open floor plan) and property.
The other day I was walking on the beach and thinking about our
house. I was remembering the many places I lived and how some were “home” while
others remained in the “house” category. When I think about “home” I think
about only a few places. One is the place where I grew up from the 5th
grade until I left for college. I then stayed at home on and off until I moved
away for good at 27 years old when I was first married. It was the family home. The second place that
I called home was a cozy townhouse that I shared with my toddler little girl
when I was divorced. It was special because back then, it was the two of us
facing some tough times on our own. My third home is the one we are selling. It’s
the place I moved to when I was 38 years old, married for the second time and heavily
pregnant with our son. My husband, daughter, son and I made it home for 24
years. It was a place of laughter, arguments, stomach viruses, parties,
meetings, work issues, homework, four dogs, two cats and new beginnings. It was
the place that comforted me when I lost my parents and my in-laws. It stood
tall (and weary) through the teen years. It was the madhouse messy place when
the kids prepared for college and then later for a wedding. It was home. It was
classic. It was probably a lot like yours.
Two weeks ago the house started playing tricks on us. It was
if it didn’t want us to leave and like a pouting child was doing anything it
could to make us stay. In the course of
a week a few catastrophes popped up. First, a tree limb fell down, knocked out the
power and zapped a few appliances. It ruined all the refrigerated and frozen
food. Next a fox fell into one of the window wells and died. It stayed there
for days before we noticed and by then the flies came. A lot of flies. Next,
the riding mower broke and another limb fell and took the cable wires down.
After all this was said and done and everything made whole
again, I took a walk throughout the house and weird as it sounds, I talked to
it. I told it to let us go, I told it that I was getting too old for this
nonsense and that another family needed to move in and love it like we did. The next day was the open house and three day
later we got an offer from a couple who went through the open house.
I don’t know if the offer will stick but we’ll cross that
bridge when we get there. All I know is that one chapter is closing and another
is opening. We have another place to move to and soon (hopefully) it will take
over the crown of “Home”. That’s because
the common denominator with all three homes is that love lived inside the
walls.
