before
I had a dream that I was going camping with the previous owners of my house. I woke up feeling reassured in that way a good dream can make you feel, and I couldn’t recall the details. Brushing my teeth I realized that just before I woke up I was in a gas station convenience store selecting soy jerky from a shelf of clear plastic jerky tubs, and then I remembered that the gas station was a stop on our way to the forest. The owners were still an older couple like in real life, but they were happy and fit and full of enthusiasm. In real life I don’t know about any of these things. I wish that going camping together was the way a house sale worked.Instead, in real life, I saw the couple only once, for less than ten minutes. My agent brought me by to see the house when there was already an accepted bid on it. The owners would have assumed I was irrelevant. The husband, whom I will call Leonard, sat in a chair watching tv the whole time, never looking up. I got the feeling he had been sitting in that chair every night for many years. The wife, whom I will call May, guided me efficiently but politely through the rooms. This is my pedestal sink, she said in the bathroom. There’s the garden, and it’s all organic, I’ve never used any pesticides on there.
This had been Leonard’s childhood home, and he and May then spent decades there after they got married. During the inspection their photos were still on the wall and so I know they raised a son in the house as well. The rooms had been brimming with things only a week before the sale, but only a few were left behind. There’s a forgotten drawer of cutlery and a child's drawing of a dragon in the closet. There’s a small cross ornament in the bedroom, which perhaps they left on purpose.
And so I think that May and Leonard were full of faith, and I hope that it helped them with their move. I like to think that they were ready for what is next – for not dusting and not going up and down stairs. But I worry that leaving a house you’ve made a life in for so long can only come with terrible sadness. And I wish, if camping is unrealistic, that we could at least have had tea, that I could have heard some stories of the house and that I could have asked Leonard to leave behind any tools he was going to get rid of. He used to have a lot of tools – I can tell by the handmade workbench he left in the garage – and I wonder if he sold them or gave them away. Now here I am buying new tools, which feels foolish. Your tools will be put to good use right here in this house, I could have told him.
One thing I know for sure is that they found out I bought the house to live in – not to fix up and sell for a profit, and not to rent out. They know I am a young woman and that this is my first house and that I’m excited for it, and I hope that this made them pleased. And I am thankful that they left a house that feels so blessed – from the cross tiled into the kitchen floor to the tiny stamp on the entry room threshold that says believe in miracles to the daffodils blooming by the porch.
posted by tortaluga @ 9:11 AM
1 Comments:
Leonard & May would have loved to have met you! (maybe the dream is their way of doing so ;)- the lil' house will continue to fill with love and care.
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