Moving from Rural to Suburbia
As the guys from Double Diamond Moving and Storage, a company owned by our head freestyle ski coach, unloaded the truck, one of them pointed out that it looked like a bear hunt was underway up the street. I looked over and saw a police car with the tailgate open and an officer in the back loading a shotgun. I approached slowly and sang out sweetly from a distance, “You’re not going to shoot a bear now, are you?” He looked at me through his dark shades and tried to laugh it off, but I persisted until he told me there was indeed an aggressive bear on the loose that had been breaking into a house at the end of the street. I wondered what kind of cooking was going on in that house to attract this criminal. I’m thinking the town wildlife is bolder than the critters who choose a more peaceful life in the countryside. We never did hear a shot.
But you can’t hear much in this sweet, sunny house on a corner lot, smack in the middle of suburbia, where kids play stickball in the street. When we designed our house in Old Snowmass, I insisted on big, airy spaces, a big mistake with three boys. As they grow, I realize basements are an absolute necessity to drown out boy sounds, including raging dubstep and crazy dodgeball. Next summer they are going to be on a sports team, no matter the resistance!
Before we bought the house, I leaned against it and bounced off as if shocked by an electrical current. “It’s not wood,” I gasped. I think Wade takes immense pleasure in watching my feet get slammed onto the ground with every move and my realization that life is not all silver spoons and cashmere. “Better to be the worst house on the block than the best,” he announced proudly, standing in his classic pose: architect’s pencil behind his ear, floppy hair spilling out of a worn visor, Carhartts loose over iron-hard thighs, arms folded across a beautifully strong chest. What a rock he is, so much so that I have to be careful not to ask him to lift things that are too heavy, because I know he’ll do it, whatever it is: refrigerators, bureaus. He’s an ox, as he proved to me when I first met him on Halloween.
Remember my dream of living simply? Well, that’s Baddy. As long as he has his family and his bikes… and his skis… he’s happy. After all, it was he who lovingly built our house in the country with his bare hands. I just added the interior touches, which I can do again.
As I dive into boxes and turn the house into a little jewel, I’m dealing with the aftershock of moving. It’s setting up internet and TV that tops off the move as a completely emotionally draining experience. After four hours of being hung up on and transferred by the phone company, I finally found an agent with some compassion for my plight. “I jusssst neeeeed my internet hoooooked up,” I gasped, wanting to hook up to something… anything.
In the midst of it all, Thumper is growing like a weed, and I’m not even watering him, because he’s doing his best to cut the strings from his family and be only with his tribal pack of friends, who have all been on the loose for quite some time. Coming from the Aspen Community School, Thumper is a bit late on the scene and is on the warpath to catch up. “Break us in slowly,” we tell him as we let out the leash and rapidly reel it back in.
When we finally get him back after a double sleepover, we barely recognize him. He gives us attitude, rolling his eyes into the back of his head and saying, “Ohhhh, really?” His brothers get the full brunt of it when he unleashes his untapped strength on them with “the typewriter.” As described by Feisty-One, who is growing tougher from having a big obnoxious puppy dog of a brother, he gets pinned down, and then Thumper tap-tap-taps his fingers on his chest, ending with a DING, which is a slap across the face.
When Hootie-Hoo looks confused, wondering where his Thumper has gone, I explain that he’ll be back, but at the moment he’s morphing into a bit of a monster and we all have to be patient.
Wine helps. Instead of getting irritated, I slip into the humor of the new persona Thumper is trying on, but I don’t fall for it, and in the end his sweetness returns.
And so we move on, and life continues all around us as we discover leaks and mold and unpack all the candlesticks because our lights aren’t working. I’m going to go out on a limb and say we are happy in our new home, despite the glitches. We’ll see if that happiness stays lit once we break into the walls to fix the problems.
