House prices in our town are going through the roof. (What? Should I have written going out the garage door?)
We have a nice home. Someone floats a figure which it is possible we could get by selling it. It is a tempting thought.
But it doesn’t take long for some reality to cast a shadow over the idea. Because if we were to put our patch of ground and the buildings on it up for sale, those would not be the only things we would be selling.
To begin with, of course, we’d be selling 36 years of memories. A few parties now and then. Two kids growing up from babies to young adults. All the friends they brought home over the years. All the friends we have had over. Family events large and small.
We’d be selling our neighbours. The ones across the street with the fancy heated swimming pool who made it available to us all the time our kids were growing up. The neighbour who has a key to our house and who minds our pets on the rare occasion we are away for a day or two. One time we were in Ireland for a week. Our doggy slept with our neighbour in his bed. He brought the pup back to our place for two hours a day so he would remember where his home was. The neighbour who plows the snow out of our driveway to help us old folks out. The young couple next door who paid for a new board fence between our properties as the old one we had put up many years ago had seen better days. The neighbour we drove to the hospital after her dog bit her hand when her husband was away. The widow up the street who calls us now and then to fix something that’s gone wrong.
We’d be selling the old street we live on with sidewalks on both sides where people young and old walk, bike, roller blade and jog all day long. We’d be selling our chance to become King of Albert Street where we have gone from 44th longest owner out of 44 homeowners in 1985 to fifth or sixth in line to the throne today, almost all of the others having moved away or died.
We’d be selling the ten or so restaurants and three variety stores just a few minutes walk from our place, along with the fifteen minute walk to the malls and the same distance from downtown. We’d be selling our fifteen minute stroll to some of the finest live theatres anywhere.
We’d be selling our double lot where we built big skating rinks for ten years and where our kids had lots of room to play. We’d be selling our four big maple trees, one big birch and one blue spruce that was given to us as a wedding present and which is home now to blue jays and cardinals.
We’d be selling our pet cemetery at the back of our lot, where fourteen critters – two cats, nine gerbils, two hamsters and a pet mouse – sleep. We’d be selling the three rabbits who live in our yard, one of which has become my best buddy and who comes hopping up to me when I call it.
We’d be selling a house full of music – pianos, guitars, flutes and harmonicas – where, like the birds in the trees outside our windows, we have sung out our hearts with joy, and sometimes sadness, over the years.
We’d be selling the treehouse my daughter and I built and the shed my son and I erected from scratch. As well as the world’s best inukshuk I assembled from flat stones lying around. The flower and vegetable gardens, our squirrels George and Scrounger and their nameless cousins.
We would sell all this and more for the chance to sit in a small condo or apartment where we would spend our days alone counting the coins in our pot of gold, because, as wealthy as our property might have seemed to have made us, we still could not afford to go buy another home of equal value with our windfall.
How easy it would be to put up a sign.
And how hard to never look back.
So the price might keep going up and the temptation will come and go and while the future is never certain, why would we sell our dream when our dream has finally come true?
When we bought this place, a popular saying came to light around the same time: Bloom where you are planted.
So, we’re planted and we’re blooming …
And we’re not for sale.
©2021 Jim Hagarty
