We’ve lived in our house with a For Sale sign in the front yard longer than we’ve lived without it. Yesterday we finally sold the thing, albeit not before getting dunned for a ridiculous neighborhood boondoggle, which I’ve already informed one HOA officer I fully intend to come back and egg once it’s completed. It’s the only way I see myself getting my money’s worth.
But back to the house, which isn’t ours any more, though we live in it for one more month via a rent-back deal with the new owner. He’s an attorney, which gave me a queasy feeling, but he proved to be a decent enough fellow at the closing. We like the house very much, with its swimming pool and rounded castle walls. But somehow we settled on the conclusion that we aren’t going to be the family who lives in a house like that amidst meticulously edged and fertilized lawns. The new owners will be that family, and I’m sure they’ll be just fine, and the neighborhood gossips can now breathe a sigh of relief.
As for us, we’ve found a house on twenty wooded acres north of the city. It has a creek running through it, and a pond, and a basketball court, and the boys are beside themselves. There’s also a garage/barn-type structure that is apparently a mechanic’s dream, though all I noticed is that it has a corner office which will serve nicely as my writing haven. We’ve traded suburban for rural, and mortgage for mortgage, and somehow we’re becoming country people, which when I say it makes me conjure Nellie Olsen’s mocking voice.
Now there’s just the small matter of moving our houseful of stuff without divorcing one another or accidentally leaving behind one of the children.
I wrote about the potential move a while back at World on the Web, and faithful reader Coneen Brace was so excited for us that she went to my Amazon Wishlist and sent me Frederick Buechner’s The Sacred Journey, along with an album by the Hackensaw Boys: “Love What You Do.”
I wanted to take the latter as a sign from God that I should quit right now and just work on the books I’ve been writing, but the Wife noted that it doesn’t rightly count as a burning bush if I picked out the album myself and put it on my own Wishlist. Plus there’s that new land to pay for, and the baby needs new shoes, and when you get right down to it, women are far more practical, as a general rule, which is why more of us aren’t starving. But the point is, thank you Coneen, for both your generosity and your optimism, because there’s a good many people who know me better, and who are taking private bets about what will do me in first, a chainsaw or an overturned tractor.
And you people know who you are.
So it’s off to the country in the next few weeks. Fresh air (allergies). Clean country living (well water). Nature in all her splendor (poison ivy, snakes, the frogs my sons keep capturing). Man in his natural element (real men, anyway). Praise the Lord, and God help us.
