Forever houses

My wife has a history of agreeing to rent or buy the first place we visit whenever we are looking for a place to live.  

This is great, she says.  We will take it.

No, no, no, I respond.  We can’t take the first place we see. 

But we do.  I visit all the other places on my own and then decide, okay, my wife is probably right.  

If it is not the perfect house objectively speaking, it is the perfect place for us.  

As my sister Mary Anne has put it, it is not as if things happen for a reason.  It is that things happen and we find a reason.

***

Over 40 years ago my wife and I sat in the living room of her group house in Georgetown.  

We had been seeing each other for about 4 months at the time.

My wife said she always viewed her life going one way.  Now she realized that, having met me, her life was going to be different. She knew already that she was going to spend the rest of her life with me.

This was news to me.  I was happy to hear it.  

My wife says that she has changed everything in her life but her husband.

I am also grateful for this. 

***

My wife and I have now lived in 15 places together.  We have owned 7 of them.  

The second to last house we bought, I stood with the realtor on the front lawn of the first house on our schedule and told her, even before we stepped into the house, that we were going to buy that house.  

We did buy that house.

We lived there for a year before we bought our most recent house.  And we bought this last house – our forever house, the one we plan to die in – without my wife ever having stepped foot in it.

I monitored the house listings.  I contacted the realtor.  I visited the house with the realtor.  And I negotiated the deal.  

The first time my wife ever saw the house was at the inspection the day before we closed.  

This is perfect, she said as we drove down the street with the house coming into view.  Good picking, she told me.