Remember that story I wrote in March about making the decision to rent my sweet, little cape cod? The one I fell head over heels with the minute Mark and I saw it? Turns out that short-lived experience was a disaster in many ways and in the immediate aftermath I realized that the landlord life was not for me.
A week after the renter moved out I met a realtor and started the process of selling it. For the last six weeks I have woken up every morning ticking off an endless list of things I needed to do, going to the house multiple times a day and hiring people for mulching, painting, and hauling. When I went to bed every night I mentally added things to the list, slept awful, and never felt like I would get to the finish line. Last week while I was cleaning sinks and toilets in a final push, Mike was outside mowing. I was running on empty – physically and emotionally. Spending every day there alone with decades of memories swirling around me and not a single magic wand hidden in a closet to bibbety-bobbety-boo things back together had taken its toll.
The listing went live on Friday and on Sunday afternoon I signed a contract. I didn’t know what to feel except an overwhelming combination of sad and relieved, so I did what I always do when my feelings were colliding- I puttered in the garden. I had an assortment of shovels to choose from but was missing my favorite spade and drove over to the house to see if I left it there. The whirlwind of the past few months and the stream of people seeing it for the first time and passing judgement on it was gone. It was just me in my quiet house of staged furniture and every neglected thing for decades finally addressed. “Don’t cry,” I told myself as I walked through every room (again) because how would I ever stop if I did? My shovel and I came back to the house Michael and I have shared these last two years and I tended to my fledgling garden which has been filled with new plants, ones I transplanted from the house last summer, and more within the past few weeks.
I moved things around, cut back two blue star plants that were trying really hard to die, and placed the plants I had just bought at the nursery. While in the midst of my digging I unearthed a plastic horse that looked to be from a kid’s cowboy set. I picked it up, wiped some of the dirt off of it, and marveled at the fact that despite its years underground it was in perfect condition.
Finding small treasures happens to be in my wheelhouse. There was one a few blocks away with a for sale sign in front of it that saw me through the happiest days of my life followed by the darkest and loneliest. In a few weeks new owners will move into it. There’s no telling how life will unfold under that roof, but my wish is that she wraps her arms around them and carries them gently through all their days.
As for the things that have clawed their way out of the darkness, maybe it’s time for them to turn their faces towards the sun.
