A House is a Home
I couldn’t sleep very well last night so when Scott went off
for a soggy run with Lota early this morning, instead of turning over and
falling right back to sleep like I normally do, I got up.
For the early part of the morning, the rain seemed to be keeping me up. I couldn’t tune out the heavy drops endlessly falling on the skylight right above our bed. That skylight has been the bane of my existence until quite recently. We had moved into this apartment in mid-April, just as the days were starting to get longer, and the skylight never allowed it to ever get that dark. Now, with August passing us by, the days are rapidly shortening and, more importantly, the rainy clouds have cast a shadow over everything. For once, when it’s time to sleep, our bedroom actually seems somewhat dark.
Just at the time that we’re about to leave. I must say I’ve gotten used to this apartment, its large kitchen and big windows. It’s become home, as places tend to do when you live in them long enough. I’ve already started packing things up in boxes – pictures I had finally put in frames; tokens from faraway life prayer wheels, Russian dolls, banchus and one Massai beaded saucie; books. There’s a lot left to pack, of course, like the kitchen, and all those odds and ends that don’t quite belong anywhere but also don’t belong in the garbage. And the few pieces of furniture we’ve acquired since moving in – an old comfortable green couch, a black book shelf, a tv stand, a small tv, two end tables, a table with four chairs, an ugly dresser, and a bed. I guess it’s more than a few pieces, but it’s not a lot and they don’t seem like they’ll fill a house, which is what we’re moving into.
Scott and I are signing closing papers on a house this afternoon. That house I had written about a few posts ago that I had agonized over and turned down. Well, I had called back a couple days later and changed my mind. We actually negotiated an even lower price and from there it’s just been talks and emails with our loan officer Catherine, inspections, texts and calls with the seller Vicki, waiting and hoping. And now, about two months after our first visit to the house, we’re about to make it ours. We’re going to hand over a very large check and become, dare I say, homeowners. We’re pretty much depleting both our savings so that things like a boat and big trips to the other side of the world are pretty much out of the question for now. Scott says we’ll build our savings again.
But already it seems like we’re talking about this thing we’d to the house, and that thing, and what about how we’re going to furnish it?
We’re taking his giant step that, while exciting, also feels like a sort of end. But I know I shouldn’t be looking at it like that. We’re buying this house so it can be a beginning, the unknown beginning to stories we’ll create in that house. Stories of traditions not yet imagined. Whenever I think about warm memories from my childhood, like sitting around a full kitchen table, I now see the walls that surrounded us. A house is a home.
We did the final walkthrough on Sunday. Surfaces and floors were still shiny and wet from just being cleaned. Vicki even shooed out Sailor, their heavyset cute black lab, into the rain so he wouldn’t shed more hair in the house. It was the first time we had really seen the house without the furniture and decorations and things that made it lived in, so it was just empty rooms, a blank canvas.
She showed us the final improvements that the home inspection had called for. Little things like caulking in the bathroom, making sure a window that had been painted shut could now open, smoke alarms, and other things that since I don’t understand, I won’t mention.
I felt detached when we did the walkthrough. Until we’re moved in and out of this apartment, the house won’t feel real. And the permanence of it will likely only sink in with time. In a little more than a year and a half in Juneau, we’ve moved three times. In the past ten years, I’ve lived in more than ten different dwellings in various towns and cities and countries, so the thought of living in one place for years and years is impossible to fathom.
In those years, I’ve prided myself on the ability to adapt easily to different situations – whether it was sleeping under a mosquito net or having to wear my puffy winter coat inside an apartment that had no heat, whether on the outskirts of a major city or in an island community of less than 2,000 – but I’m starting to realize that I was able to adapt knowing none of it would last that long. This change coming up, a change to permanence seems harder to wrap my mind around.
I know becoming a homeowner doesn’t put an end to our life of traveling. I don’t doubt that we’ll take journeys across seas and time zones again. I guess it just means that we’ll always have one place to come home to, that’s ours.
I don’t want to change the title of my blog. That sort of change, I’m not ready for. I still have wanderlust. I’m just not exercising it at the moment. And perhaps, my life is more in flux than it’s ever been before.
For the early part of the morning, the rain seemed to be keeping me up. I couldn’t tune out the heavy drops endlessly falling on the skylight right above our bed. That skylight has been the bane of my existence until quite recently. We had moved into this apartment in mid-April, just as the days were starting to get longer, and the skylight never allowed it to ever get that dark. Now, with August passing us by, the days are rapidly shortening and, more importantly, the rainy clouds have cast a shadow over everything. For once, when it’s time to sleep, our bedroom actually seems somewhat dark.
Just at the time that we’re about to leave. I must say I’ve gotten used to this apartment, its large kitchen and big windows. It’s become home, as places tend to do when you live in them long enough. I’ve already started packing things up in boxes – pictures I had finally put in frames; tokens from faraway life prayer wheels, Russian dolls, banchus and one Massai beaded saucie; books. There’s a lot left to pack, of course, like the kitchen, and all those odds and ends that don’t quite belong anywhere but also don’t belong in the garbage. And the few pieces of furniture we’ve acquired since moving in – an old comfortable green couch, a black book shelf, a tv stand, a small tv, two end tables, a table with four chairs, an ugly dresser, and a bed. I guess it’s more than a few pieces, but it’s not a lot and they don’t seem like they’ll fill a house, which is what we’re moving into.
Scott and I are signing closing papers on a house this afternoon. That house I had written about a few posts ago that I had agonized over and turned down. Well, I had called back a couple days later and changed my mind. We actually negotiated an even lower price and from there it’s just been talks and emails with our loan officer Catherine, inspections, texts and calls with the seller Vicki, waiting and hoping. And now, about two months after our first visit to the house, we’re about to make it ours. We’re going to hand over a very large check and become, dare I say, homeowners. We’re pretty much depleting both our savings so that things like a boat and big trips to the other side of the world are pretty much out of the question for now. Scott says we’ll build our savings again.
But already it seems like we’re talking about this thing we’d to the house, and that thing, and what about how we’re going to furnish it?
We’re taking his giant step that, while exciting, also feels like a sort of end. But I know I shouldn’t be looking at it like that. We’re buying this house so it can be a beginning, the unknown beginning to stories we’ll create in that house. Stories of traditions not yet imagined. Whenever I think about warm memories from my childhood, like sitting around a full kitchen table, I now see the walls that surrounded us. A house is a home.
We did the final walkthrough on Sunday. Surfaces and floors were still shiny and wet from just being cleaned. Vicki even shooed out Sailor, their heavyset cute black lab, into the rain so he wouldn’t shed more hair in the house. It was the first time we had really seen the house without the furniture and decorations and things that made it lived in, so it was just empty rooms, a blank canvas.
She showed us the final improvements that the home inspection had called for. Little things like caulking in the bathroom, making sure a window that had been painted shut could now open, smoke alarms, and other things that since I don’t understand, I won’t mention.
I felt detached when we did the walkthrough. Until we’re moved in and out of this apartment, the house won’t feel real. And the permanence of it will likely only sink in with time. In a little more than a year and a half in Juneau, we’ve moved three times. In the past ten years, I’ve lived in more than ten different dwellings in various towns and cities and countries, so the thought of living in one place for years and years is impossible to fathom.
In those years, I’ve prided myself on the ability to adapt easily to different situations – whether it was sleeping under a mosquito net or having to wear my puffy winter coat inside an apartment that had no heat, whether on the outskirts of a major city or in an island community of less than 2,000 – but I’m starting to realize that I was able to adapt knowing none of it would last that long. This change coming up, a change to permanence seems harder to wrap my mind around.
I know becoming a homeowner doesn’t put an end to our life of traveling. I don’t doubt that we’ll take journeys across seas and time zones again. I guess it just means that we’ll always have one place to come home to, that’s ours.
I don’t want to change the title of my blog. That sort of change, I’m not ready for. I still have wanderlust. I’m just not exercising it at the moment. And perhaps, my life is more in flux than it’s ever been before.
posted by Siapiau | 6:52 AM
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