Coveted Neighborhood
We bought our house on Laurel Drive in Melrose, two years after we were married and lived there for twenty-eight years. We raised our children there and then it was time to move on. My dream was to have a bungalow-style house. We hoped to find one in Laurel Wood, a prestigious neighborhood full of bungalows, Italian-inspired houses, and historic homes. There was a charming city park on the river side of the homes but the property taxes were very high. We put our house on the market and then the waiting game began.
It was an anxious experience for us. Dave and I found a house in Laurel Wood we were interested in so we made an offer but the sale was contingent on our house selling. We soon realized that selling a house that way is tricky and very stressful. That deal fell through so we decided to sell our house before making an offer on another. We still called it D-Day, regarding the house we didn’t get, we both felt like throwing up! We had our hearts set on buying one in that charming neighborhood. We were stuck between disappointment and denial. We still toured other homes in Laurel Wood, there were plenty of bungalow-style homes with rich wood floors, and cabinets with louvered glass but almost all of them needed serious repairs and refurbishing. Some houses had damp, dank basements with dirt floors and one had a dried carcass of a cat.
Dave and I had more disagreements than usual due to the stress. I was discouraged and I realized I’d been stuffing down my emotions. I had learned long ago that journaling was a helpful way to process my emotions. I could write whatever I wanted and no one would know. Writing is a simple but powerful way for me to acknowledge what I was feeling, and then walk in quiet confidence. After touring many of the homes for sale in Laurel Wood we had to come to the reality that it was near impossible to find one in our price range.
In late August we got an offer on our house on Laurel Drive we countered it and the deal was accepted within a few hours. We hadn’t anticipated it would take so long to find a house that was right for us so we decided to rent an apartment. I told Dave that we had started in an apartment and we could do it again. He said it helped him with our dashed hopes.
Around that time we also saw Doug and Joy off with a moving van full of wedding gifts. They were going to Springfield Massachusetts for college. It was good for them, but for me that day, the change was difficult. Doug called from Salt Lake, Utah that night. It was good to hear his voice, it helped combat my blahs. I knew God was with us, but could I find him in the midst of my rush? I felt a bit homeless and wondered where we would live.
We had to be out of our house by early September. There was so much to do in preparation for moving to the apartment. We had to sort through the things we wanted to put in a garage sale and there were several years worth of items which had accumulated that we had to sort out. Plus, we had scheduled a trip to visit Doug and Joy in Massachusetts and I was going to sew curtains for their new apartment. My to-do list was very full.
When we officially started packing, Dave and I started in the building we called the barn. It was our “emotional holding tank” for things we weren’t using but were not ready to give away. Dave started in the workshop while I started in the pump room. I kept home-canned fruits and vegetables on the shelves there. He challenged me to save all the empty canning jars. He was right, I didn’t know when or if Serena and I would be together. I decided to give away half of my jars. Canning symbolized productivity and accomplishment, something I had done since childhood. It was strangely sad.
Dave’s mom helped pack the pantry. She commented that I had enough goods to start a small grocery store. I learned something about myself that day. I had tons of canned goods, spices, mixes and everything in between. I was ready for anything. I had abundant stuff because I had abundant storage. It was good that we were moving to an apartment so that some real cleaning and purging could be done. Dave and I were a little off-sync because of all the stress. We spent a whole weekend getting ready to visit Doug and Joy in Massachusetts and I hadn’t started sewing the curtains. Being back east would give us a break from our daily grind. It would be wonderful as long as I didn’t dwell on how much work was waiting back home.
It was good to be with them to see and experience what their lives in Massachusetts were about. We had to adjust our expectations somewhat because they were both gone during the day. One day we took a long walk and explored antique stores. In one of them, we found a wedding band for Dave to replace the one he lost while swimming at Oregon’s Steamboat Falls. We found a fabulous Italian restaurant which was one of their favorites, so we took them to dinner there several times. Dave loves pasta, Joy loves pasta so Italian food wins!
Doug had applied for three different jobs and he was offered all three. One was at school where he wanted to work and after a second interview, he was hired. He was a teaching assistant, a job was well-suited for and would give him time to decide if he wanted to be a teacher. His working hours worked well with Joy’s college classes but Doug’s job at the school didn’t pay well. They decided he could get a second job until their finances were better. He got one at a bicycle shop and learned to build and repair them. When the time came for us to go back to Oregon, heaviness settled on me. It was tangible, like fog. I hated saying goodbye and having to leave Doug and Joy thirty-five hundred miles away.
After traveling and packing and getting ready for our move time was precious. I still had the bookkeeping to do for our personal budget and for the salon. I also routinely stopped by Mom’s place after work to help her balance her bank statements. Dave and I got good news we could rent our house on Laurel Drive until the first of October, we were on a list for an available apartment and we got approved so we could move in right after the closing of our house. That sure simplified things. Even so, I found myself reacting to stress and anxiety with a bad attitude.
The moving day finally came. It was exciting that it was happening. I thought God must have a sense of humor, we hadn’t moved in 28 years then we would have to move twice. Because we were packing up our whole house and were going to live in a small apartment, we ended up putting a lot of things in a heated storage unit. The boxes we put in our attic would come into play when we bought a 1910 house and I was in a manic episode. I thought the attic was my refuge place, but it was a near-panic place for my family.
We lived in an apartment for most of the year. We kept looking in Laurel Wood but it was expensive to live there. Our realtor, Gail, took us to several homes for sale in other areas of Roseburg but none were quite what we wanted. We got restless and followed newspaper ads for houses for sale; we drove around neighborhoods and saw some with For Sale by Owner homes. One of those was on Cass Street, ironically across the street from the apartment we rented right after we were married. The owner showed us the house several times. It was built in the late 1800’s and it was attractive to us. A former owner, a bachelor, had started refurbishing it but abandoned the project for reasons we didn’t know. The new owner, a contractor, upgraded what had been started and had done a nice job of finishing the project.
A big advantage of our new house was the location. It was one and a half blocks to our church, bank, post office, and several of our favorite restaurants. It only took five or six minutes to walk to any of them. There was a long driveway leading to a small garage and behind the house was a small patio area. Also in the back was the laundry room. On the main floor were the living and dining rooms, kitchen of course, a bedroom and a bath. Upstairs there was a large master suite with a tiny half bath and storage area. The storage area was a little loft with no flooring, a hallway under the eaves. I hated it because it wasn’t well lit and I had to stoop down in most of it. It was a creepy, crawly place just like Belize had been.
A big problem that we overlooked before we bought the house was the stairs were located right in the middle of the living and dining room so the home ended up with a horseshoe configuration. There was barely room for living room furniture and no logical place for a television. We ended up putting the television on our dresser in our bedroom so we could watch it sitting on the bed, not our style at all.
We did some expensive upgrades like tiling the bathroom and vanity room floors and installing hardwood floors in the kitchen living and dining room. We replaced light fixtures, cabinet hardware, and faucets and when we were finished, the interior of the house looked really nice. We were happy but we didn’t know we were about to experience a very difficult time ahead.
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