This is the house that my (now ex-) husband and I called “The Forever House”…which has become an irony that it’s still hard for me to have a sense of humor about. My best friend knew we were looking and suggested it, despite it being just out of our price range. Still, the minute we visited the house we both instinctively knew it was for us. There is a lovely stand of apple trees in the back yard, which is deep enough that you can’t see the house from the back corner of it. I have a vivid, visceral memory of lying on a blanket with my six month old son under those trees, watching bees pollinate everything during a sun-drenched summer afternoon.
It was also in this house that I spent two deeply cold, lonely years waiting for my marriage to heal. I am sure even today I would break into a cold sweat if I had to descend the steps into the basement it holds such pain for me. Moving out of this house was as difficult a step as I’ve ever had to take…and as such the whole of my attachment to it now has a distinctly bittersweet quality.
