10
Dedicated to the person I was when I bought this house. I'm so proud of her.
Someday, I’ll write a book about the first year in my house. I’ll do it just for me. Some stories are too big to be reduced to a few words or an Instagram post.
I moved into my house at the end of a private, unpaved road in a small town in Maine on October 1, 2015, but we closed on September 11, 2015. It’s not a date one forgets, at least in America for the last 24 years.
For the last few weeks, I’ve been seeing 9:11, 9/11, and 911 pop up in random places. At first, I was alarmed (see above). Each time I saw the number, I felt a pang in my heart until I remembered the personal significance of the date. Since then, the memories have been trickling back to me, slowly at first and then hitting me like a wave:
The night after work, when I go to an open house alone. The house is on a crowded cul-de-sac. It’s small and dark. I remember thinking, “You’re single and will never have kids. This is exactly the kind of house people expect a lone woman to live in.” I go back to my apartment, and I cry myself to sleep, my hand over my mouth to not frighten Charlie Bagel, my dog.
The very next night, walking through a large, light-filled house on a hill with my realtors, a married couple in their 70s. At one point, he remarks how very odd it is that I’d found this listing online at all. “There was an error in how it was listed online,” he tells me. “It didn’t come up for us when we pulled up the map. It’s almost like it appeared just for you.”
My mom at the inspection, sitting in a chair in the corner, her face as pale as the white walls. It’s her first time seeing the size of the house, my 2 acres enveloped by a wall of towering trees, in the middle of nowhere, and she is overwhelmed. The inspector pulls me aside to whisper that there are bat droppings in the attic. “I don’t want to tell your mom, because she looks like she’s about to faint.”
Me, pulling up to my friend’s house to pick him up for the closing, blasting “Let the River Run” through the open windows. He stands on his front step and shakes his head.
Seeing how my name is listed in my mortgage contract:
and asking the room of female realtors, mortgage brokers, etc, who are there for the closing, “Um, did my mother tell you to list my name this way?” They all laugh. (Sorry, Mom. It was a solid joke.)
My first night in the house. No street lights. No lights from the neighbors. The house sits in pitch-black darkness and silence. I’ve lived in DC, LA, and Chicago, and for the first time, my heart is pounding with pure fear as I walk the hallway to my new bedroom. I set a baseball bat by the bed.
The morning I discover that I have no hot water. Frantically calling people, including my brother-in-law, for help. Call a plumber who eventually discovers I accidentally hit The Red Switch instead of turning off the basement light. My first expensive mistake.
The day I cannot figure out how to turn on the new lawnmower and have to call my friend Mike to come over and show me. Humiliating. I can’t even mow my own lawn. (In my defense, it was not explained in the fucking manual.)
Discovering it’s “black fly” season because there are no less than 30 flies swarming the living room like I ordered a plague-for-one.
Coming home from a weekend away to discover 3 flying squirrels are dead in the upstairs toilet. I close the bathroom door and vow to deal with it in the morning.
When those two delivery guys arrive with my new bedroom furniture. One of them casts an appraising look around the property and remarks how alone I am “out here.” A chill runs over my body. They leave, and I wonder if I should get a gun.
All the random Tuesday mornings, Thursday afternoons, Saturday nights, etc, that I am hit with something I do not know how to fix, and a service bill I do not know how I will pay. Too many to count.
Exterminators. Plumbers. Repairmen. Carpenters. Excavators. Septic. Well. Culverts. Everyone arrives to teach me new words.
My parents come to visit in October and, as they leave, realize there is no water. A man arrives to inform me that my well is dry. My mother cries. My father is terrified. I usher them away and promise them I will be fine, and then I am without water for almost two months until it snows. I shower at the office, do laundry at my friend Katie’s house, and haul water home for me, the dog, and the toilets.
For years after, my mother will whisper to my sisters and brother not to shower at my house when they visit, so I can have enough water, until I beg her to stop. They don’t visit as much anymore, and I still wonder and worry if that’s why.
“This is a lot of house for one woman.” The words I hear most often, usually from old service guys who arrive to fix the pipes, the sink, the boiler, deliver heating oil, look at the stairs, fix the roof.
My first summer. The Sunday I spend so many hours pulling weeds, pushing the lawnmower up the hill, and cutting branches in the hot sun that I fall to my knees in the grass, and it takes all of my effort to get my sunburned body back inside. I all but crawl through the front door. What if I can’t do this?
The morning I wake up to discover there are cows. On. My. Front. Lawn.
And a bull.
Watching my brother, my friend Jon, my friend Meg, my friend Moya. Painting walls. Painting ceilings. Putting furniture together. My dad paints the hallway from a tall ladder he brings from home. My mom cleans the stove until it’s sparkling. Mike at the lawnmower. Pete helps me get a massively heavy treadmill up the stairs. My family, sending me flowers on the day I moved in, not realizing they ordered flowers from the woman who sold me her beloved house and who cried when she handed me the keys.
The first time I see the house in the snow. The first time I realize the depth of the silence after it snows.
Discovering how delicious a cold beer is after you’ve mowed the lawn.
The day during COVID when the house is besieged by farm turkeys and chickens. They surround the house like it’s some kind of invasion.
Standing over the bathroom drain and watching the water get sucked down with ease. I fixed it. I actually fixed it. Elation. I can do this.
The early summer when I try to grow tomatoes on the deck. The late summer when I realize I have spent roughly $120 to harvest $3 worth of tomatoes.
The summer mornings when I carry my dog Charlie out to the yard so he can try to stand long enough to go to the bathroom. Him laying in his bed by the window. Resting my head on his chest to hear his heartbeat. The day I pick up his bowls, his big bed, his collar, and carry them downstairs to the basement.
My friend Kate comes, first just her and then her and her dog Lulu. Sarah with Ben and their two kids, her parents spend the night and bring me two plants that I still have. Meg comes with her husband and then her first baby and then her second. My friend Liz comes with her family for Thanksgiving, taking up every room in the house, for a whole week. My brother comes with his wife and new baby for New Year’s Eve. This is a dream I didn’t even know I had until I had it.
The Saturday afternoon a few weeks ago when a group of new girlfriends come over for book club. They’re all in their late 20s and early 30s. They marvel at every detail of the house and tell me my house is beautiful. They don’t seem to notice what needs to be fixed, painted, or redone. I finally understand why old men marry younger women.
My mom leaving me a note after a visit, telling me how beautiful and comfortable my house feels to her when they come to stay. My dad watches me haul trash into the car to take to the dump, trip after trip after trip, taking note of the strength in my arms now, amazed at how I seem to move through these hefty tasks with ease.
That morning when a guy comes to give me a quote for my new roof, and instead launches into a full-throated lecture about why I need to replace my deck. I feel my back straighten. I look him in the eye and say, “I called you for a quote for my roof. The deck is my concern. Not yours.”
After he leaves, I place the quote for the roof down on the counter and wonder at the sound of my own voice in that moment, when I spoke to that man. I don’t recognize myself, in a way. But I like her, I realize. I like the woman who has that voice.
The day they drive away after installing the new roof that I pay for, every penny, I sit on my little stone bench and stare up at the roof. My roof. Mine.
Mine.
