I am a real estate agent.
I have been into hundreds of homes. Foreclosed homes with torn out fixtures, broken windows and missing appliances. Modern homes, empty and echo-ish with cold polished metal appliances and furniture that costs more than my car. I've been in apartments, cozy and neat.
Every house has a feeling, and you can tell when a home was loved, there's an energy that just beams happiness and welcome. In homes where abuse has occurred there's this oppressiveness that colors the house dark, bleeds into the walls and when you walk in--it's like you can tell that something happened here.
I fall in love with some houses, but never the way that I fell for this one.
I was bringing my client to an old vacant colonial on Herbertsville Road.
It's April, crisp and sunny. We pull up a gravel driveway. The yard is beautiful, in a neglected way. Wild strawberry, purple wildflower and dandelion mix into the untended native grasses. A mature cherry tree stands in front of a saggy porch, tossing up pink-tipped branches.
I use my lockbox to open up a slider that holds the key to the home. A heavy black and round antique key pops out. It's the kind of key that you'd imagine could open up the secret compartments of an ancient jewelry box.
The house is 103 years old.
I look at the door, and it's heavy, solid oak with a large keyhole that I can peek through. I slip the key in and we open the door.
We walk in and I am slapped in the face with a feeling that stops me in my tracks.
This is my home, I think to myself.
I belong here, and I've never been so sure of anything in my whole life.
This house is my soul mate.
It feels so weird that the feeling is so strong. I felt that if the house could talk, it would say, "Welcome home! I've been waiting for you!"
I'm stupified by all the strange thoughts running through my head and it's dreamlike.
Meanwhile, I'm trying to keep up conversation with my client, as she's remarking that it has no central air conditioning, an old heating system and she's saying, look, the floors are tilted.
"Well that's the way the house settled," I tell her absently, "It's 103 years old."
"It's probably haunted," my client says.
I notice that the windows are old, probably as old as the home, and you can tell by the way the glass pebbles slightly near the bottom of the frame. Old glass slides a little, downward, pooling a little as the years and gravity drag it down.
The kitchen is wide, open to the whole downstairs, with no walls in the way to stop cooking smells that would waft around and fill up the home.
Windows are everywhere, letting in fat icy slices of sunlight that make the empty house cheery.
I pull up a piece of the frayed carpet and underneath is this gorgeous orange colored wooden floor. I show my client who's unimpressed.
"I hate wooden floors," she says.
I have a vision for this house.
There are wide moldings over every door that have been painted white. The paint is peeling a little and you can tell that they were originally the same color as the floor.
This house could be beautiful. I imagine it with walls painted the color of fresh cream, with the orange colored moldings and restored wooden floors. Big potted palms with verdant green fronds set down next to a bright leather sofa.
We walk upstairs.
"The architecture is just incredible," my client jabbers. "Look how wide this staircase is, they just don't make them like this anymore."
The bedrooms are small, in the tradition of older homes. Each door is solid, with the same antique knobs and peepholes that we found on the front door.
"The front door key probably opens up all these other doors as well," she says.
The simple bathroom upstairs has been updated.
We go up to the attic. It's uninsulated and completely open, like a loft. The floor creaks softly as we walk upon it. I think, I would insulate this space, finish the floors, and this would be my dusty library where I would read for hours in a leather chair with the stuffy sunlight coming in through those windows.
My client sneezes. "I have to get out of here," she says. "I'm getting allergic."
I have the listing sheet in my hands with information about the house.
"How much is this place again?" she asks.
"It's listed for $279,000," I tell her. "You could probably get it for $240,000."
In my head, I'm thinking-- Can I afford this house?
I can't.
I know that. My student loan payments throw my whole debt-to-income ratio under the bus. Also, I've never paid a bill on time and the credit reporting bureaus don't look favorably upon that, so I'm pretty sure my credit score stinks. I curse myself for not taking bill payment more seriously.
But I belong in this house! This achy old house loves me and I felt it as soon as I walked in!
We walk out of the house, I lock it up, my client and I say goodbye, making plans to visit another house next week.
I sit in the car in the driveway, staring up at the house.
I realize that I've never wanted anything else more in my entire life.
"I want this house," I told myself out loud.
If I have to work 3 jobs for 5 years 90 hours a week for 2 years to get it, then I'm going to do just that, because I belong here, in this house and I will not doubt the certainty that I feel for this place, even if I can't explain it.
What ever happens, I will one day live in that house.
Even if, 2 years from now, I have to knock on the door and get the new owners to sell it to me.