And so it was in the year two-thousand and twenty-four by modern reckoning that I was set to take over my ancestral home from my father. Perhaps an unusual tiding given that I am just the second-born son, and less loved than my sibling at that, but neigh on twenty years ago my brother claimed a landholding of his own that would serve as his abode until his dying day As well as his life’s work. Construction started the day he took ownership and continues to this day with no end in sight.
The family lands were then for me to claim when the time was ripe.
Such a promise is a privilege and a curse at once, not that I saw that truth back when the deal was struck and my path set and paved. It was only more recently that I could see the latter woven neatly into the former. I suppose that I could see it at all at least pertains to some gaining of wisdom across the years. Or cynicism.
My wife and I existed in a state of transience for years, always with the understanding that our current home was not our final home. We put off house projects and renovations thinking, why bother doing that now when next year, my parents might decide they are ready to abandon their steadings and we would never see the fruits of our labors?
In such a state we stagnated for nearly twenty years.
Portents of Change
Two major events and a dire warning saw things finally come to a head. The first event was my father’s injury. My childhood home sits on nearly three acres of land, partially wooded with a number of large trees that were growing there before my grandfather built the house. At times, these fall or need to be felled before they fall, and always were such tasks handled by the family—my parents loathe to spend money to have tasks handled that they think they can handle themselves. After a day of relocating logs that he should not be handling at his age, my father tore a shoulder muscle and needed surgery to repair it. This injury more than anything else set my parents in motion to relocate; my dad realized he was no longer capable of maintaining that land.
The second event, which had less impact on their decision to move and quite a lot of impact as to why it took so long to find their new residence, was the birth of my nephew. You see, my parents wanted to move closer to my brother so that they could help watch my nephew after school. And my brother would be near at hand to provide what aid my parents might require as age settles in all the more.
Prior to this, my brother, my parents, and I all lived roughly 20 minutes from each other; my parents wanted to be within bike-riding distance. This gave them a very small area in which to find a house, and it had to be a ranch house (my childhood home being a ranch, my dad refused to add stairs to his life at his age). It also needed a big enough basement or garage for his woodworking shop. Quite the challenge, indeed. And considering they started the search in the second half of 2019…. It’s understandable why they had trouble finding one at a price they could afford given the strict restrictions.
We’d Waited Too Long
This leads us to the dire warning: Erin and I were tired of waiting. We’d been waiting since before we got married (which will be 19 years this September), but once the house-hunt began in earnest, she and I immediately sprinted into really waiting. And that guided up neatly toward Doom Waiting.
There were many projects to undertake to put our mark on it and create a comfortable and homey environment. Our aesthetic is extremely different from my parents’ so at the very least, we wanted to paint just about every room in the house. But there were not-insignificant demolition and construction projects we felt necessary prior to our habitation of the estate.
Even pre-pandemic, affording contractors to do such work would have been beyond our means. The cost of such paid labor has only gone up, and availability worse. Lucky, then, that I have most of the knowledge and some of the skills required to handle such things on my own, which shifts the final project balance to cost more in personal time and less in monetary funds. An exchange I was willing to make.
And then there’s the yard….
A Brief Aside About My Mom
At this juncture I can’t decide if I should dedicate a chapter of this story to explain my mother’s lack of taste—which might be an inaccurate understanding of the issue overall. She might simply lack the ability to properly execute a tastefully designed decor. Or perhaps the fault is some combination of the two parallel ailments. No one has figured out where exactly the problem lies, but we all agree some problem exists.
Or I could dedicate a chapter to describing the yard and the many affronts to exterior design, feng shui, and the natural beauty of nature itself when left well enough alone that have occurred there. Either would arm you with the required understanding of the amount of work we would be shouldering upon taking ownership to make both the interior and exterior something we would let friends experience.
Each year seems to weigh more heavily than the last on us as well. Time marches forever forward (or so we tell ourselves) and grinds us down in the process (because we let it). Knowing the scope of what lay before us, taking on such a project was losing appeal rapidly.
Undaunted Our Heroes Plunge On
After four years of them house-searching (with one of those years being the pandemic), I had to tell my parents that our desire was waning. That if they were still no closer to having a new house by the time we were 45, then sadly we would take a pass on this opportunity. This gave them roughly two years to make a move. It seemed auspicious then that within half-a-year’s time from this declaration they found a ranch house a mere five houses down the road from my brother.
What fools we were to think their purchase of this property had resolved the greatest obstacle to our relocation.