In case you haven't heard, we are selling our house. Or trying to, rather unsuccessfully. The theory is that we could reduce our mortgage payment, reduce the number of stairs we have to climb, downsize a bit, and, basically, get a smaller, easier, single-level place that would eliminate the need to move when we are even older than we are now. Moving is a young person's game. We should know. We don't want to be doing this when we are 80. Even more, we don't want to be doing this when circumstances force us into it. We are the masters of our destiny. At least, we'd like to be. (I can hear God saying, "Hah!")
So. The house is on the market. We have loved all our houses, to some degree--this one, more than most. I think it shows. Even with so much of our extraneous 'stuff' removed, boxed, and stored, there is enough of us left in the place to give it a touch of personality. Despite being a townhouse, it is not a cookie-cutter townhouse. and sometimes its variances have been exasperating; other times, endearing. But this is a house that makes us smile when we come in the door. It is a home far more than it is a house.
Other people appear to feel that too. Not just here, but in other houses we've owned, as well. There's something about these places that draws people in. Who knows what it is--an aura, a subliminal relaxation, the color of the walls, some innate geometry or intrinsic sound or property that makes itself known and called to us...I often think that it's because our casual clutter makes them feel at home..Somehow, we have found a succession of these places and have had the fun of living in them and enjoying their magic, or whatever one calls it.
Just this week, our agent said someone sat down in our patio, looked around and said, "It's like a little bit of heaven, here in the middle of the city." Well. I don't kid myself. I like my fountain, my pots, my patio, my plants--but if this is heaven, God, you've got to do more weeding, and get more organized! It's a space that has filled up with things that caught my eye, be they colors or textures or shapes. And they make me happy.
I know what that lady meant, though. I think we all strive for that ineffable something in the places that we live--no matter how big or small, empty or cluttered, country or city. We fill our places--wherever they might be-- with things that make us happy, and that, indeed, is a little bit of heaven that we share with our friends and family. And so, whether we sell or not, whether we move across country, or stay put, or divide ourselves evenly between coasts, we will carry all those bits of heaven with us--at our side, or on our backs: the people that make us happy, the things that make a place home.
