DOWN HOME: OK, who’s the owner here?

Posted: 8/03/07

DOWN HOME:
OK, who’s the owner here?

I’m not sure whether Joanna and I own our home, or this house owns us.

(OK, technically, the bank owns our home. But we’re paying down, and if we live to be old enough, we’ll hold the title. Don’t get hung up on the details here.)

Not quite a year ago, we sold the home where we raised our daughters. I loved that place. It was comfortable and suited our family. Even empty, the walls seemed to echo the voices and laughter that provided the soundtrack to our lives for almost 11 years. The rooms fairly buzzed with memories of all the happy times we shared there.

But the commute to work grew more dismal by the day. Too many cars and trucks on too few roads means too long driving to and from work. I began to fantasize about living in a village with only one flashing light.

Jo, ever the logical member of this duo, came up with a brilliant idea: We could move.

True. We no longer worried about uprooting the girls. We were free to roam. Once we ruled out changing churches, we began to house-shop. Eventually, we cut about nine or 10 miles—depending on the route—off my commute, but that little bit cut my driving time by about half.

We quickly fell in love with our new house. And almost immediately, it felt like it’d been our home for years and years.

The other morning, however, I realized several of the things that attracted us to this house have come ’round to bite us. Not literally. Not yet.

This came to mind as I went out to check on “the hole” right beside our foundation.

We like the fact our house is about a block from undeveloped land, home to a dormant power plant and unlikely to be developed. Unfortunately, skunks like undeveloped land, too. And the pest guy thinks one might like our dirt so much he decided to move into the neighborhood.

Speaking of neighborhood, we love all the trees in the blocks surrounding us. But web worms do, too. And since we don’t have a cherry picker (Shouldn’t every family own one?), we’re paying someone to come and “snip” them out of our trees.

We adore the patio. It’s where the roof leaked like a sieve all winter. We got that fixed, but we had to tell our girls their firstborn kids will be indentured to the patio-roofing people.

Oh, I could tell you another story or three about water, but they’re not all that unusual for a house as old as ours.

The good news is we’re fixing every problem as it comes along. Incrementally, our house is getting better and better. And we feel even more and more at home all along.

The even-better news is that every little glitch reminds me we are not what we own, and security is not vested in houses and land. What matters is how faithfully we live there and the joy that springs from our lives in that place.

—Marv Knox