The Summer of Our Discontent

This is the story of our rough summer.

Some of you know that we spent the entire season selling our house...that is, trying to sell our house. A horrendous process during the best of times, this is one activity I do not advise: selling your house during a global pandemic. No one’s much in the mood to make a major life decision when we don’t even feel safe going to the grocery store. And selling your house while a deranged and tyrannical POTUS stokes fear and racism, attacks peaceful protesters and destroys democracy? It turns out that Trump-driven national instability also makes for somewhat of an uphill battle regarding home selling. Just for fun, the end of summer hit us all with the second largest wildfire in California state history at the edge of Davis. Nope. Not great timing.

In order to provide that perfect showplace illusion — that five human beings did not occupy this space known as our home — we spent the summer living with the knowledge that anyone could request a showing of our place at any moment. And when these requests came, we frantically texted, or yelled up the stairs to each other, some version of: SHOWING AT 11:00! After a week or so, we developed clear duties; we all knew our roles, and we got into a frenetic rhythm. (Truman probably vacuumed, swept, and mopped the floors 25 times this summer.) Sometimes we had to stash breakfast pans in the stove and clothes hampers in the garage. Always we hid toothbrushes and hairbrushes in cabinets and stowed loose paper in drawers. Every garbage can was emptied. Every light was turned on. Every bed was made to military perfection. And we walked out our front door knowing that strangers would soon enter to judge our most vulnerable and private spaces. 

I quickly realized the wisdom of removing all traces of personal effects as I found the process invasive and intrusive; I didn’t want people looking at photographs of my children or my husband on our honeymoon. After a while, I began to feel resentful of anyone looking at ANYthing in my house. Sure, showings are part of the process, but did these people have to enter my home? 

More than once I wanted to give up. We had had to cancel our vacation due to COVID and home-selling. Our anxiety levels seemed to increase by the day. We encountered many roadblocks along the way (starting with the shocking discovery that someone had recently stolen Andy’s identity and messed up our credit), but we navigated our way around each obstacle and never gave up. 

In the final weeks, we learned that the seller of our dream home threatened to accept a cash offer. Way too long story short: we found a buyer for our house! Just in time! We told our kids that the money was going through, and we celebrated the end of the journey: we would move into our dream house in about three weeks. We went to bed exhausted, but happy. All of our hard work and sacrifice had been worth it. 

And then we woke up the next morning to the news that overnight, the owner of the dream home sold his house to the cash-offer people. (As I see no point in going into the frustrating details here, I would just like to say that if you ever need a realtor, Chad Kime DeMasi is your man. He goes above and beyond what’s required. He did everything humanly possible to make our dream a reality.)

And so you may wonder why a picture of a loaf of bread accompanies this post. It represents all of the many silver linings we have discovered through the loss of this home. 

One of the hardest parts about thinking of moving had been leaving all of our close friends and neighbors on the South Side. (We don’t call South Davis the South Side, but I was raised part time on the South Side of Chicago, and that sticks with a person.) We love this side of town, and we knew we would miss it. The couple who live across from us felt for our dream-home heartache and appeared at our doorstep today with this freshly baked loaf of bread. (I ate several thick pieces for dinner tonight with an extra large glass of crémant — thanks Nathan Tran and Erik Reynolds!) An act of kindness like this helps quell our sad, mopey feelings and fosters our connection to others, something we all need right now. And when doesn’t fresh sourdough bread make everything better?

Losing our dream home gave us the gift of perspective. We already have a lovely home. Spending the summer attempting to sell it to some other family made us fall in love with it all over again. Fifteen years of memories live within these walls. Truman came home from the birth center not long after we moved here. Geneva held all of her slumber parties here. This is the only rooftop Jukie has ever explored after bedtime. 😬 Okay, that’s a memory that I could live without. But it did happen here. Twice.

We have not lost everything we own in a wildfire. We have our health. We have each other. And ours is a home filled with love and laughter and homemade bread, all appreciated consolations in a world of peril and uncertainty.