No Place Like It

We're preparing to sell our house - to move locally - and so far it's been relatively painless. We got the giggles when the Realtor, who is also our next-door neighbor, walked through the house making suggestions. He came to the living room, where three tall bookcases stand in a row. He paused, trying to think of a tactful way to word what he wanted to say. 

"If you could ... maybe ... fill up four or five boxes with books...." So that the bookshelves would look like normal people's bookshelves, with a tidy partial row of books and a framed photo or ceramic bowl filling up the rest of the space. 

The Realtor put the house on the Multiple Listing Service website about 3:30 yesterday afternoon. By 8:00 yesterday evening there were three showings lined up for the next day. 

It seems there is quite a shortage in our fair city of single-family detached houses like ours. One story, a decent-sized house on a proportionate lot, with a fenced back yard and screened back porch. The yard has been our oasis, and we'll miss it. But the whole thing has got me thinking about home, in general.  

The first couple of places I lived after college never felt like home. They were fine, as apartments go, but my energy was on staying upright and pedaling smoothly into adulthood without toppling over. My third apartment felt like home. I lived there for three years and held the same job in my field for four. When I moved, it was because I got married. Since then, home has been wherever M. is, the hubs, and even crappy places that we've moved into and out of have still been home.

I had finished a call in a city a couple of hours west of here when we were moving back to our fair city in 2013. We worked with a Realtor, and via emails and photos, he got an idea of what we thought home should look like. We drove in on a Saturday and viewed five houses. Over lunch, we discussed the possibilities. I said that either this house or that one would be about equally good. 

The Realtor smiled gently. "Now, you really love this house," he said. It was true. I loved the funky layout that was the result of a basic 1957 ranch house having an addition to the rear that almost doubled its size. That left the dining room in the center of the house, and three bedrooms in a row. I loved the spacious den that resulted, and the screened porch. I loved that someone had painted the dining room a rich barnyard red.

We walked into that house, the third or fourth on the list, and we were home.

So far, we're up to fourteen showings. Eleven or twelve buyers have said it's not for them. It's okay. Someone will walk in and decide that they are home at last. For me, if things go smoothly, home will be a new place. But the hubs will be there, and family, and pets, and security, and just-right-ness.

We each of us can choose to make our hearts, our whole selves, a welcome space where each person who encounters us feels that s/he has come home, even if they've never been there before. That's radical hospitality. That's home.