Eight years ago, we built a house on a hill. It was yellow, it was sweet, it was ours. We designed the floor plan ourselves, anticipating to grow a family into it. We were alone on the hill for quite a long time; years, even. The recession hit and we had our cul-de-sac to ourselves, waking up to crop dusters sweeping over the farmland to our North. Slowly, a neighborhood built around us, and we watched the corn turn to lumber, the dirt turn to road.
We did in fact grow a family into that yellow house on a hill, and we were happy. It was a very nice house, a big house, and we finished the basement, officially making this the house that offered anything we could ever need. After stumbling over each other in a tiny apartment in our first year of marriage, we were thrilled to move into our "forever" house. Our dream house, even.
But life happened. Surgeries happened. Chronic illness happened. Loved ones died. Jobs were lost. And the hill that held our dream now held us down. Could it be, we wondered, that we wanted to travel, wanted to do more things, have more experiences, rather than stay so much at home, even if it was big and lovely and full of conveniences? Was our house on a hill really providing enough happiness to make it worth sacrificing so much?
One day in September we running an errand in our city's downtown, a historic downtown, charming with its mom-and-pop drugstores and hardware stores, coffee shops and bowling alley.
"Oh, look," Michael said, pointing to a sign perched in the front yard of a house on the main street.
"That super long weird rambler has a for sale sign." We kind of shrugged, said a distant, "huh," and didn't think of it again until I looked up its listing that night out of curiosity. Michael hovered over my shoulder and then looked closer. He saw what I saw. Even more square footage. But half of our mortgage. Figuring something must be wrong with the house, we flippantly mentioned scheduling a showing, just to look.
The next day was Super Tuesday, and after Michael went into that historic little downtown to vote, he drove by that super-long, weird rambler. The relator was there. Michael walked in. He came home with a nervous excitement barely painted under the surface of his face. "I want you to see this house," he said. And 5 minutes later, I did.
Two steps in, I was in love. This house felt familiar to me. It reminded me of my Grandparent's mid-century home that I visited so many times as a little girl. The way the fence got caught on the grass below it when I yanked it open transported me back to my first childhood home in South Minneapolis, where I would do the very same thing entering my back yard. This house. There was something about this house that was already home.
Within 24 hours we had a rent-to-own agreement signed and started the scramble to pack and put our own home on the market. The week after Thanksgiving, we moved into our new old home. On December 27th, we put our house on a hill on the market.
This home continues to feel familiar even as we continue to discover it. We came home one afternoon this week to discover that the trees outside our home were ones that flowered in the Spring, and we spent many afternoons under its branches, intoxicated by its intricate blossoms and fragrance. We see green coming up in the gardens and watch, waiting for them to introduce themselves to us. We're discovering parks we can walk to, neighbors we can chat with, and we are getting really good at building fires.
We were at the yellow house today doing some maintenance, and I cried. I cry every time I'm there. I don't miss the convenience of toilets that don't clog once a day, the super soft carpet, or even the abundance of counter and cupboard space in the kitchen. I just miss what we created in that house...the births, the gatherings, the kids' heights marked on the wall. And I'm sad we're moving out of the house where my mother-in-law Marti was last with us. I felt close to her there, could see her at the dining room table and on the floor with the kids in the living room. She will never be at this new house. And my Grandma, who spent holiday after holiday with us in the yellow house, will never be well enough to ever come to our new house. I'm sad for the visions we had of hosting soccer teams for spaghetti dinners in the backyard, and the prom pictures on the stairs. Even though we chose to move, to have more freedom, when I'm at the yellow house I can't help but hear "it's the loss of a dream" scripting through my sad thoughts.
One particularly weepy night a few weeks ago I stood underneath a window we designed at the yellow house, a large picture window perched near the ceiling above our stairway. When I would go upstairs to go to bed, I always stopped to look at the sky in this window, and Orion was always there glittering back at me. This window, I would miss. But like so many other things revealing themselves to us at our new home, I was walking in the house one night when I paused first to look at the sky. And there, despite the glow of the downtown streetlights, was Orion. Still there, clear and strong, bow and arrow aimed to hit the mark.
Tonight, Michael created a fire that lasted for hours, and we sat around it, entranced, at first with marshmallows and overtired kids, then as husband and wife, and then, just me. I sat communing with God and the stars, delirious over the warm wind and persevering flames. Thinking of my tears this afternoon at the yellow house, fighting off the words about losing a dream, I realized that we did not loose a dream. We are still living the dream; It just moved south a bit by about a mile, and became a whole lot brighter.
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