Renting a Home
“I hate to say it, Jillian my love, but you’re sounding a bit manic,” my mother said over the phone as I told her how the lease for the rental we were supposed to move into on Monday had gone POOF into thin air. I guess I was sounding a bit too optimistic about the adventure of it all.
It all began after this post on my Facebook wall on August 20:
Wanna know the “Real” part? Got a call at 10 p.m. last night for a showing this morning at 9 a.m. Had 6 boys sleeping over who didn’t go to sleep till 1 a.m. Woke everybody up early. Picked up boxers that were strewn everywhere after running naked around the yard like monkeys (they just saw Planet of the Apes). Spilled a tub of ground coffee all over the kitchen floor… could this be the one?
As it turns out, that was the buyer we were looking for, and now I’m running around like a chicken with its head cut off, trying to find a place for our family to live.
I wonder if you got a good laugh out of my interview on MomsTV, the one where I came down with brain-fart disease on air and forgot the question mid-sentence. I was too busy thinking about which of my favorite local hotels I could call and ask to stay at for a month with three boys, a dog and a blog, and of course my 007-ing husband. As for the dry hair, it’s the hard minerals in our water, I swear. I’m thankful nobody was smoking, or my head would have gone up in flames.
Then came the coughing attack during the panel discussion. I felt like Albert Brooks’ character in Broadcast News sweating through his newscast. The coughing turned into a panic attack, and I was about to rip off my mic and run off set for water when the camerawoman motioned to me. I misread her sign language. I thought she was signing “DO YOU WANT WATER?” but soon discovered, when no water came to the rescue, that she was signing “Are you all right?” to which I had nodded vehemently: YES.
That’s just a glimpse into my life these days, and the saga continues. No sleep. Nightmares where people are eating my ears. I had my nose glued to the rental listings the other day when Hootie-Hoo walked in. “Are you looking at houses again, Mommy? Is that a rental or a rent-to-own house?” The boys are getting just as obsessed as their mother with finding a home.
Last Sunday, we were one week from closing, and even though the rental contract was still being negotiated, all looked good. We had found a nice little home in suburbia, a fine place to call our own for six months. It would be an enormous departure from the home we’re leaving but a welcome reprieve from two years of stress. It’s been a mixed bag of emotions: guilt for feeling sad when we’re so lucky to have found a buyer, anger toward the banks and the distressing politics, and elation at the chance to move forward and let go of a dream house that has been weighing us down, pulling us into deep, murky depths.
This past month, as I pack up the house and say goodbye to our land and our neighbors, I feel like Steve Martin’s character in The Jerk, insisting he doesn’t need anything as he walks out the door clutching an ashtray, a paddle game, a remote control and a lamp. Letting go of things is harder than it looks.
To be continued…
Scenes from Our Backyard
