Posted December 23rd, 2003 by Michelle

I saw my home today. I was on a walk, here in upstate New York where it was 50 degrees but covered in glistening, melting snow, and I passed the house that has been calling me since my first trip down that road. It is white with black shutters, and this past summer there were workers putting in a new patio. There is a veranda, and the ceiling of the veranda is painted sky blue. There is an addition to the side that looks like a greenhouse, or that was a greenhouse. There are neighbors, but not too close, and the woods close in just behind the back door. What is missing is me. I’ve never seen people there, other than the construction workers, and though Tessa claims to have seen a woman coming out of the house to talk to the workers, I don’t believe it. I think that house is waiting for me, waiting for a time when I would have a small family of my own to fill it. It’s not a big house, but it’s not small. It’s perfect.

I walked by it on my way home as well, and couldn’t stop wishing for the chance to walk in the front door. I want to step through, put my keys on the table, light a fire, pour a glass of wine and kiss my daughter on her tiny cheek. Hear the sound of dinner being made. Sit down at my desk to get some work done. People do this very thing all the time. Why, in reference to me, does it sound so extraordinary?

My walk was beautiful, but I have things on my mind that need to be solved, or cleaned up, or cleared, and as I walked I removed layer after layer of fleece, wishing I could shed my thoughts as well. At a particularly intense moment of daydream I saw the house for the second time, and I stopped in my tracks. Why here, specifically? Why this very house, more than any other I’ve seen upstate, or really, anywhere else? What draws us so strongly to such specifics spots? It’s just a house. It represents so much more.

My daydreams are so vivid, so dimensioned and real, and the minute I have them I am sad because my endings are never what happen in real life. Never, not once. I’ll daydream about everything from making dinner to moving to Africa and things are never even close to what I imagine in my own little fantasy-ridden mind. I dream also of getting second chances, of being in situations past but at the beginning, and of having the capability of making another choice. Of not doing/saying/writing/believing/hoping the wrong thing. These are the most tortuous because second chances are basically extinct. But this house is different. If I ever live there, it means something has gone terribly right. It means that something unexpected would be around the corner, and that something will beyond my control. My daydreams cannot sabotage the unknown.