We OWN it!

If you look at the numbers, I suppose Brad and I have unofficially achieved 66% of the American Dream.  We are 1.5 kids, 1 cocker spaniel named Millie, and a ½ picket fence short, but last Wednesday we officially became home-owners (disgruntled property tax payers.)   And it only took us a combined 75 years to get there.  I will not miss our lousy landlord or the shared driveway.  I will not mourn the silverware drawer you have to pry open with an athletic stance and two hands only to have it litter our muffin tins with toxic sawdust in the cabinet below.  I will not grieve for the prehistoric centipedes that scamper out of dark corners when Brad is not home – god help me; I am utterly creeped out by those repugnant legs.  I will not pine for the crumbling front step or purple toilet seat or pink toilet seat or even the marigold-orange toilet seat, despite the fact that is it unquestionably the most tasteful of the three.


There is a lot I won’t miss about this house, but it has been witness to two of the best years of my life.  This will always be our transition house when Brad and I sort through our stash of various return address stickers that we ordered in bulk, but haven’t thrown out because we are both certifiable hoarders.  It was our trial rental suburban house to ensure we could handle the quieter, simpler life nine miles from downtown where drivers actually halt at stop signs and kids do cartwheels in front of lemonade stands.  The house with the crazy mail slot in the downstairs powder room beside the aforementioned purple toilet seat.  The house, three blocks down from where I grew up, that lovingly welcomed our hefty nine-pounder after she was born and the house she practiced her first wobbly steps in.  The house where we warmly hosted family, friends, neighbors, plastic Fisher-Price gadgets, Baby Einstein clutter, Evenflo thingamajigs, as well as a Rody, red tricycle, used cozy coupe with a gimp wheel, wagon, and thirty-seven stuffed animals in a span of twenty-four months.  As I learned from our last move from the city two summers ago, a home is a merely a decorative shell for all of our shit.  And, perhaps, a vessel for the moments that captivate, inspire, surprise, sadden, amuse, anger, and delight us as humans….but we can have those anywhere.   Still, there is some melancholy as we leave Bonnie Brae.

As with any kind of change, this marks an end of a chapter for us.  And that closure makes me feel old in a way, forcing me to acknowledge with pristine clarity that two years have simply whizzed by.  That there is nothing I can do to get that time back even if I wanted to. That the unknown awaits us as well as a giant lawn that will require weekly mowing in 90 degree heat.    Now that our savings account smacks of a sieve, we are busying ourselves with painting and planting and prettifying (that is actually a word) to create the most hospitable “shell” possible to live out the memories that await us.  I know there will be disappointments and setbacks in our new abode.  I am anticipating some toddler mega-meltdowns and decibel-deafening teenage tantrums from behind slammed doors.  I accept there will be a leaking faucet, some nail polish stains on the rug, perhaps a summer baseball through the back window.  I will even permit the occasional spider or even a spring infiltration of ants, but I refuse to cohabitate with those prehistoric, heinous centipedes.

In contrast, there will be lovely moments too.  Many of them.  And then, there will be a few really exquisite ones.  Moments so rare and gorgeous that the house itself may even smile.  And they will all be ours.  We own it.  Along with our 1000 new self-sticking address labels.