I'd Be Home for Christmas

Remember when I asked for Susan's Dream House?  Well, it wasn't exactly a nebulous concept.  I had one in mind.  It was a beautiful 1945 Colonial in my dream neighborhood of Nashville.

The home has only been occupied by two families in its sixty-something year history and the listing didn't include any images of the interior.  When I contacted a realtor about it, he said that the property "required vision."  Guess what?  I have vision.  I can remove wallpaper.  Or rather, I can hire someone who can remove wallpaper.  I know people.  Whatever that house would throw at me, I could handle it.  I have transformed a three foot wide kitchen into a show piece.  Or rather, I hired people who transformed that kitchen.  I wrote the checks once, I could do it again.

I mentally moved my little family in.  We would build a fence around the 0.84 acres for the dog.  We would baby proof the serpentine stairs  We would have custom shelves built in Rocky's office.  I'd paint my closet ballet slipper pink.  We would host epic Christmas parties and sleepovers and political fundraisers.

I just had to wait until the first of the year when I could justify floating the cost of a rental and what was sure to be a hefty heap of home repairs.  It sold.  Last week.  After languishing on the market since March, it was gone.  Sold just a few weeks before I could march myself up to the front door and tell them that I was going to raise my little boy in that house for the next twenty years.

Don't bother consoling me with the idea that the right house has yet to find me.  I have high demands.  Three bedrooms upstairs, a yard, and in a decent public school district.  Homes are being bulldozed left and right in Nashville, being cleared for developers to build two or three homes on one lot.  Other properties are mid-century ramblers, lacking the character I adored in my last house.  It just seemed like I found my diamond in the rough and this was the house I could truly make my home.

This weekend I drove by the house on my way to the grocery store and saw that the very first thing the new owners did was decorate for Christmas.  They weren't remediating mold or destroying a termite colony.  They were making my house their home.  I just hope they enjoy my pink closet and invite me to at least one sleepover.  If not, perhaps, they'll change their mind and sell it to me.  And at the very least, please don't tear it down.