Bye Bye Betty, Hello Prissy Missy

Well, the owner of my dear Ugly Betty didn't like the offer I put on the house, and some problems with the house that would be expensive to resolve surfaced. Bye Bye Betty.

But, never one to give up hope, I just put an offer out Saturday on a more expensive, less in-need home. The lot is still large and wooded, but the house is fairly pristine -- not forbiddingly perfect, but pristine. So, she is "Prissy Missy" to me.

Missy is an immaculate and well cared for ranch home built in 1958 with three bedrooms, a two car garage, a fireplace and a 12x24 foot 3 season pine-paneled breezeway. The living room (which is massive) has a great bay window. There is storage everywhere! Her yard is beautifully planted; and there is both a maple tree and a cluster of white birches in the front yard. The yard also has a variety of other trees and bushes, some of the flowering variety, that I have yet to identify by name. Missy feels like a house where your extrovert aunt Charlotte used to live. She is pale grey with white trim and has charcoal shutters. But her doors reveal her secret nature -- they are a vibrant and deep rose pink.

Financially it is a bit more than I thought I might be chewing, but doable.

Now, to have the owners accept my offer.

All of this house-hunting has me imagining a new life -- coming home to a new garage, cooking in a new kitchen, sleeping in a new bedroom. I imagine details that change along with that - being able to garden, to have a dog, living in an area where it is easy to go fishing, shopping in new stores, meeting new people.

I am wild with the joy of it all. The past few years have been tough ones, and the thought of building an enhanced life, as well as my dream of home ownership coming true -- well, it is almost more than I can bear. All that and the chance to have a dog again...my goodness. I pinch myself regularly to make sure that I am not dreaming.

I had not acknowledged even to myself what a BIG deal home ownership is for me. I have lived in or around NYC for so long that the idea of home/yard was just not in the cards. I feel like the sheer space of a home is intoxicating. I found myself feeling very moved when I walked around Missy. I stood in the living room, looked out the back window and imagined myself living there, owning the home. I felt my eyes tear up, and I am not entirely sure why.

I need to pray about this, to find what it is that God wants me to learn. I will be moving back to my home town. Like Mr. Finnegan, beginning again. On the one hand it is coming full circle -- I have not lived there since I was 19, which is 37 years ago. But, as the Greek philosopher said, "You cannot step into the same stream twice." It is not the place I grew up in. The town has almost doubled in size, and the last store that was on Main Street when I was a kid, Conner's Card Shop, is now closing its doors. Most everyone I knew there is gone or dead. But I still have this deep "place connection", and after the difficult few years I have had, it feels as though I have come home to heal -- to remember a life different from what I have been through. But mostly, it feels as though it is a place where I can take all of who I am, all of whom I have become since leaving, and build something new -- something that is different from Olde Life and Current Life, but that has bits of each wrapped up in it.

Plus, I have a deep soul connection to New England. I love the west, and had planned originally to move there, but God or fate or luck seems to have had other things in mind for me.

So here I sit, seeing the road opening before me, not having a clue what lies ahead, but walking where it opens. Oddly, I am not frightened. The world is an abundant place. I am blessed.