More memories...

Today is the fifth anniversary of my buying my house. For me, owning a house was a major life-goal. It was something I knew I wanted to do.

And, at some point - I guess it was my mid-20s - I realized that if I waited until the hypothetical husband appeared, I might never own my own house. (There was a time when women didn't buy houses alone. They lived with their parents or lived in a "girls' rooming house" or lived in an apartment. Then, when a man came along and married them, they got a house. Along with nice towels and good kitchen stuff. I'm glad those days are past, so I'm not still living in some rooming house somewhere and using the towels that came out of a box of detergent*)

(*Does anyone else remember this? When I was a small child, one of my grandmas bought this brand of detergent - and, like the prize in the cereal box, there was a towel in it. Or maybe she just talked about it happening, and it was before my time. But I do remember her showing me towels she got free in a box of detergent).

Anyway. Five years ago. Two days after the September 11 attacks. Everyone still freaked out - no planes flying, people waiting for the other shoe to drop. But I had made an appointment with the seller of what was soon to be my house, and his mother (the real owner), and the lawyer, and everything. Mr. Cox and his mom were coming up from Dallas to take care of it. (I remember the e-mail conversations we had in the days leading up to the sale - lots of shock over what had happened, lots of back-and-forth "are you okay?" questions. I think he e-mailed me a news account of some of the good things that happened - people queueing up to give blood, the outpouring of kindness and decency).

I didn't teach on Thursday mornings in those days - my schedule used to be, teach my lecture classes all on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and then I had a lab Thursday afternoon. The appointment was for 11 am or so.

I remember we were made to wait for a while. I also remember the lobby stunk of cigarette smoke and later Mr. Cox expressed disbelief that in this day and age, someone would still smoke in an office.

Finally, the attorney took us in. Now, this was kind of an unusual house sale - I did not have a mortgage. The house I bought was small and the housing market here was VERY depressed in 2001. I had negotiated with Mr. Cox and we decided on a price that was low enough that I could pay cash for (or rather, cashier's check). This was mainly because I had part of an inheritance from one set of grandparents left - it was the leftover of money that had been invested to pay for my education. (The investments had done VERY well). I also had a "gift" from my father (he had money coming in from one retirement income at that time). I also had $10,000 of my own money that I had managed to save up while I was in graduate school. So I had put all that together and gotten a cashier's check for the price of the house.

I'm kind of glad the sale wasn't any more complex. The lawyer was kind of a jerk - he totally patronized me, I got the feeling he either thought I wasn't old enough to being a house, or he was totally old-school and thought women should be married before they bought houses. But whatever. Mr. Cox and his mom were happy to sell me the house - because I was going to live in it instead of turning it into a rental house (there were other people looking at it but Mr. Cox took my offer because his mom said she hated the thought of the house being all run down by a series of renters). And also because I could pay cash, and Mrs. Cox was moving into an assisted-living center and having the money at the ready would help a lot.

She cried a little as she handed over the keys. She told me to enjoy the house.

I thanked her, and told her I would.

And then, since there was still time before my lab, I went to my house. MY. HOUSE.

I remember standing on the front porch and looking out towards the street and thinking, "This is what I will see every morning from now on." I took a quick walk-through of the house and made notes of what needed to be fixed and what I could do and what I needed to hire someone to do. I checked out the backyard.

Oh - one other thing. The yard hadn't been mowed much that summer, and I noticed some small white flowers coming up in the middle of the lawn. I looked at them more closely and realized they were ladies' tresses orchids (Spiranthes cernuua). They are a prairie species. They are not a particularly rare species here (but they were up in Illinois) and it pleased me immensely to see them there. Almost as if the house were welcoming me.

They've come up occasionally since then - didn't this year but then again it's been so dry. I assume they were here before the lawn - when this whole area was big open fields - and they've managed to hang on since the 30s or 40s when the area was developed.

But I slowly began the process - starting with getting a locksmith - of making the house mine. Over the next weeks, I had people in to do the necessary repairs. I painted walls and repaired some damaged wallpaper. I ripped out spoiled carpet (Mrs. Cox had had a small dog) and put in a sticky-back tile floor in what is now my sewing room. I had the floors refinished.

It took over a month - I didn't move until nearly the end of October. A lot of that fall was taken up with the house business - I spent a lot of my free Tuesdays painting.

And it was all totally worthwhile. At one point my colleagues threw me a surprise house shower - they gave me lots of gardening stuff in particular, because they knew I didn't have any (having lived in an apartment) and that I wanted to do a lot of gardening in my new house. I still have bulbs that come up every year that one of my colleagues gave me, and I still use the wheelbarrow another colleague gave me.

And you know - it was powerfully symbolic to me, during that strange and sad fall, that in the middle of all the geopolitical craziness going on, that I had a house, I could make that house more mine with paint and tile and my own furniture and my own pictures, and I could work in my garden and plant bulbs and trust that they would come up next spring. And that there would be a next spring for them to come up in.

I am still happy with my house. There are larger, grander, newer houses in town but they lack the personality of mine. The layout of rooms in my house is just right for me. I love the old glass doorknobs on all the interior doors. The wood floors that I paid so much (and went through so much agony over in the timeline of getting them done) are a constant source of delight.

I've been known to whisper to the house, as I stand somewhere in it, "you are the best house in the whole world." And I believe it.