Go bump in the night

By TAD BARTIMUS

Lightning struck at 8:36 p.m., on a Tuesday.

"By the way," my friend said at the end of her phone call, "would you like to buy my house?"

After six years of non-stop looking, our wait was over.

We'd despaired of ever finding another home after moving 4,000 miles away from the last one. When our rental was sold out from under us in a place with zero rental options we knew we faced homelessness at the end of the school year. A deadline was set to decide what to do next. Meanwhile, I wished on every star and consulted a ouija board.

When we move we experience the strangeness of unfamiliar corners and doors, of new toilets that run when old ones didn't, of a higher-pitched refrigerator motor. But there are also the wonderful surprises.

Like many beautiful places, houses for sale in my town are practically non-existent because of water constraints, zoning ordinances and million-dollar views bought by millionaires. Teachers, farmers, construction workers and other regular folks who manage to find a small piece of land often live under tarps and tents and in lean-tos for months sometimes years -- while they save money to build permanent structures. Their children may not yet be masters of their multiplication tables but they can miter corners and run a plumb bob.

Why our friend chose to sell her four-year-old home to us ("No realtors, no lawyers, and cash only, please") instead of the many other renters also on the prowl we don't know. Perhaps we appeared neediest. But to our eternal gratitude, the day after her phone call we shook hands on the deal while sitting on her soon-to-be-ours front porch.

Last night, after months of cliffhanger paperwork involving fire insurance (rural zone), termites (now you see them, now you don't) and money (barely enough), I slept in my new home. But very little sleeping got done. I lay under the skylight, moonlight pouring in, and reveled in the night sounds, sights and smells of a bedroom that will be mine in this next chapter.

When we move we experience the strangeness of unfamiliar corners and doors, of new toilets that run when old ones didn't, of a higher-pitched refrigerator motor. But there are also the wonderful surprises; a view of the sunrise from a different window, the absence of street sounds, the faint whiff of an exotic flower. All of that was mine. There was also a white cat streaking like a four-footed ghost along a rock wall at 3 a.m. Errant nuts from an unnoticed tree clattered down on the roof with every breeze. At dawn an unseen rooster crowed, the day's first reminder that I no longer live in a city.

Philosophers from Aristotle to Charlie Brown have celebrated the sanctity and security of home. Our pursuit of happiness is usually entangled with getting, and keeping, a shelter of our own where we can safely drive nails in the wall, toss slippers under the bed in the morning and know we'll still be there at night, turn a key in a lock and keep out the vagaries of the world. I know that I don't really own my house, the bank does, but I consider this a mere detail that 30 years and more money than I can count will reconcile. For now, I am the one who decides what trees to plant, what bushes to trim, what color to paint the shutters.

That first night, as I adjusted to the sighing and settling of my new wood-and-concrete cocoon, I suspended chronic anxiety over all the undone things and gave myself permission to revel in an unfamiliar feeling of permanence. I also recognized that my joy would be temporary; the running toilet meant the plumber was on his way.

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