This Could Be Home

On house hunting, hills made for sledding, and the first hint of home

It was early August. We'd seen exactly two houses in our search and already, the boys had developed very different reactions when I announced we were going to see another one.

Holden: “YES!”

Caleb: “Ugh. Why again?”

Still, they came along.

When we pulled into Park Lane, the realtor waved to us from the driveway. Before I’d even stepped inside, I was charmed by the front porch.

Then we walked through the door.

I looked up at the tall ceilings and around at the rooms, and something felt different.

For the first time since I’d started looking at houses, I wasn’t immediately calculating. I wasn’t thinking about square footage or taxes or what might need to be replaced.

I was picturing us there.

I could see us pulling into that driveway at the end of the day. Sitting on that front porch. Coming through that door with backpacks and groceries and all the ordinary pieces of our life.

Yes, I thought. This could be home.

The boys, meanwhile, had their own criteria.

They raced upstairs, where the two bedrooms were almost exact mirror images of each other. Caleb inspected both and immediately claimed the one on the left.

“This one has more plugs.”

Apparently, the great bedroom debate had been settled by electrical outlets.

Meanwhile, I had gone back to worrying about the property taxes.

Out back, the yard sloped downhill, which the boys immediately recognized as a feature rather than a flaw: they could sled.

Another point for Park Lane.

Then there was the basement.

You had to get to it from outside, which already felt ominous. But nevertheless, the realtor headed down first with his flashlight, calling back that it wasn’t really a usable basement, but it had the important basement things: the electrical box, heating equipment, utilities.

I peered down into the dark opening and decided I could take his word for it.

The boys happily followed him down.

Apparently, haunted basement vibes are an adult concern.

Creepy basement aside, there was one other problem I couldn’t quite get past: the house had only one bathroom, and it was downstairs. The boys’ bedrooms would be upstairs.

Later, when we were home, I asked if that would bother them.

Nope. They didn’t care.

Holden announced that he wanted us to buy that house... although his endorsement carried slightly less weight considering he wanted us to buy nearly every house we toured.

But this time, I understood the feeling.

I wanted it too.

For a while, I seriously considered it. I thought about making an offer. I went back and forth, trying to decide whether I could overlook the things that didn’t make sense because of everything about the house that somehow did.

In the end, I couldn’t.

It was too expensive for its size. The taxes worried me. One downstairs bathroom for the three of us wasn’t ideal. Wanting a house to work couldn’t make the numbers work with it.

So I let Park Lane go. It wasn’t our home. But for a little while, it could have been.

And maybe that’s why I still think about it.

Park Lane was the first house that let me see us somewhere else. Not just buying a property or moving our things into different rooms, but coming home. Pulling into our own driveway. Watching the boys race upstairs to the bedrooms they’d already claimed.

For a long time, I wasn't sure I would ever feel that way about a place again. I'd already had a home once. I'd already built a life inside one. And when that life changed, home became something I had to figure out all over again.

In the end, I didn’t find our home that day. But I found the feeling I was looking for.

And maybe that was what I needed to find first. 

That house, that day, reminded me that home wasn't something I had left behind and could never get back.

Home was something we could build again.

In a sloped yard made for sledding. 

In bedrooms waiting to be claimed. 

In a kitchen with blue cupboards I could picture making ours.

It turns out home isn't behind us after all. There's still another version of it somewhere up ahead.

And for the first time, I can see us there.