Home Sweet Home (past tense)

When I was approached about the possibility of moving to Finland to teach English and translation, my response was literally this: “I can’t do that. I have a house and an old dog.” I ended up finding ways to detach from both – rent out the house, farm out the dog – but it wasn’t easy, and was only made possible by an angel of a property manager and a friend who is an uncanny animal lover.

The old dog, miraculously, lived on with this friend to the age of 18, dying just a few months ago. And now it looks like that other barrier is about to go the same route. An unexpected offer was made on my house, although it had never been on the market, not even for a day. A picture on Zillow.com, put there for potential renters, was all it took. It seems the buyers fell in love with the house as madly as I did when I first saw it in 1993. They made a very good offer which included a price better than fair and doing all the repairs. (After three years of renters, there are quite a few.)

I just signed the last papers I will have to sign, so it looks like the unbelievable is going to happen.

I’m having all kinds of interesting reactions to this development. The center-stage one, perhaps expectedly, is grief. This feels like a divorce, except the marriage was a good one. I know there are irreconcilable differences, such as the house not being able to relocate to Finland. I am fully aware that even if I were to move back to Oregon someday, chances are I wouldn’t want to live in a house that is about three times the size of what I live in here in Finland – and mine is large for a single person, by Finnish standards. And let’s face it: I am not as young as I was when I first lived in that house. Eventually, I would become too decrepit to maneuver the tricky stairs and the steep hill down to the local market – let alone have the stamina for the considerable amount of yard work. But this is the first house I ever bought on my own, and it’s where my children spent most of their growing-up years. It’s hard to say goodbye.

I have to go back for a moment to how I fell in love. I was newly divorced, living with my children in a rented house, waiting for my ex-husband to sell our home in Connecticut. I would be using the proceeds to put a down payment on a home in Oregon. Every weekend I dutifully circled ads in the local paper and took the kids to open houses. I had found one home that would have been a marriage of convenience. All the boxes were checked – it even had a sauna – and it wouldn’t have been a bad place for us. (Later, I would attend sing-along spaghetti parties in that house, and it was quite lovely. Sometimes marriages of convenience are satisfying, and we could have been happy in that house.)

One Sunday when we were particularly exhausted, after our weekly laundromat run, I promised my children we'd only go to one open house. They weren’t too happy but I probably bribed them with the prospect of pizza afterwards. I picked the one closest to the house we were renting so we wouldn’t have too far to drive home.

As soon as we pulled up, I felt like I had seen the house before. There was something about the way it was set on the hill, the way it faced the street – welcoming but also elevated. It gave the illusion of being in the forest, though it was well within the city limits. It was an older house and defied classification (raised ranch, Cape Cod, bungalow) – later I’d find out that it was a summer home (and possibly a speakeasy) that had a second story added on top in the 1960s. We walked in the front door and I saw something charming or beautiful at every turn: a wallpapered room behind French doors, a long living room with hardwood floors and a fireplace with a reading nook built in next to it, a dining room with sweet corner cabinets, a big kitchen with a huge window facing the backyard. Through this window I could see my crabby children racing to the swing set. All of a sudden a vision of years of meals and happy times together passed through my mind. This was it. This was my house.

The problem was that two other couples had decided the same thing. My realtor said that I should write a personal note to the sellers so that my bid would be accepted. I don’t remember exactly what I wrote in that letter, but I know I put my whole heart in it. I knew it was true love.

And then, it was ours. My children grew up in that house. Friends gathered at holidays. Pets joined us and ran or passed away. Birthdays were celebrated, homework was ground out. Illnesses, confirmations, Swedish classes, community meetings, sleepovers, and even a joint party to celebrate the publication of my book and a friend passing the bar. The people across the street became surrogate parents to me. I helped redesign the street that ran past my house. And what I like to remember best is the music. Our  house seemed created for music, and someone was always in the music room, behind the French doors, playing the piano I eventually managed to buy or singing or playing another instrument (we had a cello, a trombone, a trumpet, a flute, and a viola). Sometimes Erik and Maija would sing and play duets; other times friends would come and join one or the other of them.

But then the house grew silent. This is probably what I should be thinking about now – that my mourning for the house began when my youngest child moved away. That’s when I started taking in tenants to help pay the mortgage, when I started taking on extra jobs at night, when I did little more there than work and sleep. The house never quite felt the same again. 

In a sense, this is simply another move in a progression that has already been put in motion, and it’s rather iconic after all – the empty nest, and what is done with it.

So besides grief, I am also feeling some curiosity, some anticipation, some anxiety. In pulling one of my feet out of the United States, maybe I can stand more firmly in Finland. Theoretically. This is a new identity, in a way. I’ve gotten somewhat comfortable living this kind of in-between life, and it seems now there is another transition to undergo. Well, lookee here, another feeling rearing its not-so-lovely head: anger.

When you’re in your fifties, aren’t you supposed to be reaping the fruits you’ve sown before you're too physically decapacitated to enjoy them? Slowing down a little bit after you’ve reached your career peak? Spending your free time doing nothing more challenging than traveling to cool places and deciding whether it’s time to redecorate the bathroom? Isn’t it the time between launching your children and taking on eldercare? The middle kingdom of satisfaction?

This, of course, is exaggerated, as I’m well aware. But really: how many people do you know up and move to a foreign country at this point in their lives, and have to learn a new language to conduct their life in? (Admittedly, I’d studied Finnish, but I’d never achieved fluency.) How many 50-somethings have to learn how to do their taxes in a completely different way? Or to learn how to purchase property, register address changes, do banking, health care, home maintenance and shopping? I’m not even going to get into learning an entirely new unspoken social code. Or the motivation and energy needed to make new friends.

Besides this, there's the transition of ‘no-it’s-not-just-a-year-of-wait-and-see’. Now it’s real: I live in Finland, and there’s no way back.

It’s like climbing a mountain though you’re scared of heights. There’s only one way: up. This feels like a really big step up. It’s scary, dizzying, exhausting. I want a rest. I'm tired of constant struggle.

If you’ve read my blog before, you know that I usually try to find my way back to the gratitude place. So although I’m all of these things – scared, angry, sad, grieving – I’m also amazed and grateful.

How did those people find my house? They are a young couple, eager to move in and make the house feel loved and to start a family. Obviously they deserve the house. This should be celebrated, not mourned.

How did I end up in a country where I wake up to birdsong and the scent of forest? Where my health care is paid for, and my pension guaranteed?

How did I land a job that leaves nothing to be desired – ambitious students, manageable class sizes, appropriate salary, clean and well-lit private office, research leave, kind and intelligent colleagues, livable working hours?

How did I end up owning two properties in this place – one my ancestral cabin, one a smaller version of the house in Oregon, or could be with some work?

And finally, would I really have been happy in the ‘middle kingdom of satisfaction’? How can I compare my life of exhausted and nearly constant work – albeit in a house I adored – to my present, more sane life, where I feel healthier and younger, where I even have time to travel and relax?

So goodbye, then, sweet house. Please wrap your new owners in the peaceful, welcoming aura you treated us to for 22 years. We leave with so many good memories and an anthropomorphic sense that you loved us, too.

(c) Kathy Saranpa 2015