old brown couch sitting where the pink, mint green and white Victorian floral couch was. The front windows opened onto the landscaped front yard and beyond that were rolling hills with neighbor’s houses far enough apart to be private yet close enough to see. The kitchen looked freshly remodeled with oak cupboards and glass inserts. Everything was clean and sparkling. The den was warm and cozy. I walked around the house timidly, not wanting to intrude. Mrs. Morgan took over, sensing my hesitancy.
“The house has nice big bedrooms,” she said brightly, leading us down a hall. “Here’s the bathroom. There’s another one off the master bedroom. There’s three bedrooms but I don’t use the rooms for bedrooms, since it’s only me here now. I love the master bedroom. My husband built the house and he loved the outdoors. He put a bay window in the bedroom and he would sit for hours watching the birds. Sometimes deer come down out of the hills.” Uh oh, she’d hit the nail on the head there! “The master bath is a bit odd. My husband was in a wheelchair in his later years and we needed the bathroom remodeled. So the doorway is wider than most and the shower has been replaced and expanded. We had this bench put in so he could sit and shower.” I blushed, thinking of creative ways to use that bench in the shower.
I looked out the bay windows and paused. There was a small barn, a corral, an open area of dirt and Bermuda; not a pretty site but there was space for an agility course. It was obvious a horse hadn’t lived there for years and the area needed some clean up. Mrs. Morgan led us through the house showing us all the little things her husband had done to make life easier for her while also explaining that she was waiting for the right buyer for the house. Someone who would take care of it and liven it up again. She talked about the horses her husband had kept and told us she was moving into town, closer to conveniences, downsizing to ease the workload.
I was still in shock when Rusty and I climbed into the Explorer again.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“Rusty,” I said, “it’s too much. It’s a wonderful house. But it’s too much.”
“Too much what? Too big? Too fancy? Too expensive? You grew up in that mansion at the ranch but this house is too much?”
“Even my old house was more house than I really wanted, except for the yard. I always wanted more of a yard for the agility course. If you took the condo out to the hills and plopped it down where Mrs. Morgan’s house is I’d be fine with that. I don’t need a fancy house, just a little place, close to the hills.”
“I get the feeling we are back to the issue of not liking to wear a dress. Anything that is fancier than plain old jeans is uncomfortable to you. You think of this house like you think of a dress.”
I thought for a moment and realized that he was right on. Bingo. How did he do that?
“So,” he continued, “take out all Mrs. Morgan’s fancy furniture and years of accumulated knickknacks. Take away the flowers and the embroidered towels. What are you left with? It’s just a house. You make a house into what you want after you buy it. Tell me what you don’t like about the house once you mentally pare it down to size. The only things I can really place in it that dress it up are the bay window in the bedroom and the cupboards in the kitchen. Everything else is just a nice, big open house. You could bring Shasta down. Set up an agility course. If it closed in time you could even have the wedding here. Did you see the yard beside the house? There’s a big grassy area that runs from the house right up to the tree line.”
“You like the house, don’t you?” I asked.
“I do, but I won’t make you live there if you don’t want to. I picture waking up in the morning and finding you sitting in that bay window, watching the deer come out of the hills. I think about standing in that window myself and watching you out in the corral area with the horses. I picture a house full of friends, not often but occasionally. I picture a Christmas tree in the front window.”
“You do? You picture all that when you see that house?”
“I do, and more.”
“Would you go riding with me?”
“If we started out slow. I could take you around and show you some of the houses I looked at before I went to Mrs. Morgan’s house. That might show you a thing or two. The problem is that, after seeing this house, other houses just don’t measure up.”
“Let’s see. Let’s go to a realtor’s office, tell them what we are looking for, and see what they come up with. If we haven’t seen anything we like by the end of the day I’ll be convinced.”
So that’s what we did. We looked at five more houses that the realtor thought were exactly what we were looking for and Rusty was right, they just didn’t measure up.
What would I do with a house that big? Did I really want two horses to take care of? Who would take care of them if I got stuck on a three day search? Horses needed daily care. They needed feeding and brushing and shoeing and exercising. I battled with myself back and forth over the house, thinking about how much furniture we would have to buy to make it presentable for a wedding. Ironically, finances didn’t enter the picture much. I had life insurance money left. After my house had burned down I got some compensation for that. Then my neighbor had bought the lot from me to add to his own yard. I was sure we could come up with a sizable down payment. I just wasn’t sure if I wanted the house. But why wouldn’t I want it? It was a beautiful house, near the forest, with a barn, with room for an agility course. I could set up a regulation size course out there and train Shadow to compete in obedience and agility trials. Round and around I went. I would keep arguing with myself until the wedding at this rate. Then I remembered I could have the wedding there if the house closed in time. And we didn’t have a date yet so maybe we could schedule the wedding for after the closing.
“Cass, your ears are smoking. You’re burning off your brain cells. What’s going on?”
“I’ve got a million piece puzzle and I’m trying to put it all together at once. Let’s stop for lunch and look at some numbers.”
We looked at the numbers, assigned a furniture allowance and it was doable. Oh dear. Then I drew out the floor plan and where things were on the property. I drew out a possible set up for a wedding. It was doable, too. Hoo boy. Umm, okay. Rusty watched the smoke billow out of my ears with amusement. I was trying to talk myself out of the house but the longer I tried the more it looked like the house for us.
“Houses never close in three months. If we want to have the wedding there we will have to choose a later date.”
“Let me talk to Mrs. Morgan. I think she has to move out sooner anyway. She’s moving into a retirement home and if she doesn’t take the apartment when it’s available she’ll lose her chance at it. Maybe she will rent the house to us until it closes.”
Rusty looked at the figures again. I didn’t know if I was dreading this or celebrating it.
“Cass, are you sure this is what you want?”
No, yes, maybe, give me a year to get used to the idea. I didn’t know. The house was everything I wanted, plus. This just felt like an awfully big step to take even though he was right, the condo was not right for us either.
“I think I need to talk to my mother.”
I dialed the phone wondering what in the world I was doing. I could handle being stalked, shot at, chased by lunatics and I could brave the woods and wilderness, but I couldn’t make a simple decision that would affect my happiness
