House Hunting

The sun was poured out so beautifully all over the walls and floors, that I almost didn’t want to waste any time with the usual routine this morning. We are always talking about getting up and getting ready for the day, but today had to have been up and ready hours before me. I thought of how nice it will be when we finally wake up in a house - when we hear things outside our own windows and when the morning spills over our own floors. But the search has no certain end in sight.

There’s a darling little bungalow on the corner of 11th and Taylor where we thought we might live. In 1915, it was brand new. It’s painted yellow – not a good yellow like butter, but a yellow more like pollen, bright and bothersome. Armies of unruly shrubbery have besieged the house, and there are noticeable remnants of those spring showers that never really absorb into the ground. But we fell in love with the little place, with all its quirks and quaintness. Inside there are two bedrooms, two closest, two bathrooms, two very good places to store things, and one lovely front room with a window through which the sun can pour. The kitchen window does not open, and the kitchen door leads to a non-existent patio four feet off the ground. The mailman carries a sack through the neighborhood, and the mail comes through a slot in the door. I will not mention the square footage. It is irrelevant. Surely, we thought, this must be our home.

I suppose I never understood just how important, how very vital, the foundation is to a house until the home inspector told us, “it's essentially sinking into the ground.” Then it occurred to me that the legs on which a house stands, are indeed the legs on which a house stands. There has since been a bid on the necessary repairs, and we’re waiting to hear from the sellers on whether or not they would be able to make them. The sellers are a young couple like us, and we’re not at all hopeful. So, I’ve spent the past few days half in hopeful suspense, half mourning the loss of the Taylor Street house. I suppose one day I’ll say it was a good and necessary experience when I’m looking out the windows of the place in store for us all along. But it was a peculiar and lovely little house… I would very much have liked to live there.