I was dating a man who went on a peace mission to Central America and returned to tell me he’d met someone on the trip who could really make him happy. I wanted to be happy too. I bought a house in the country.
I had looked at other places in Wisconsin, which only made my heart thud louder when I actually met my cottage-to-be. Looking back, I realize my limited real estate search had been filled with more ominous foreshadowing than a D.H. Lawrence novel.
It was December, and there was no snow yet. Everything was brown and frozen, except the shallow creek flowing across the private graveled drive leading to the property. There was no bridge, just a few heavy planks laid across rocks at the narrowest point to accommodate foot traffic. The real estate lady drove her big car right through the stream, and I thought this was charming. I imagined how beautiful everything would look in the spring. I remember returning to Chicago and telling a neighbor I had found Glocca Morra, that mythical place at the end of Finian’s rainbow.
At the time we were sitting in the kitchen, which had a beautiful old wooden-slat ceiling and a window above where the sink should have been that looked out on the wooded hillside. There were blue gingham curtains on all the windows and matching tablecloths, which I knew had nothing to do with the value of the place even as I succumbed to them. I tried to remain as stoic as the realtor, but on the long ride back to her office I told her it was exactly what I wanted. But just to be safe–I wasn’t born yesterday–I wanted an inspector to go through the place before I gave the owners what they were asking.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
I have a long history of approaching each new situation in relation to the last. My father liked to tell a story about how when I was about a year old and just learning to walk the family took a vacation and stayed in a hotel where the bathroom was separated from the bedroom by a couple of stairs. My father said I would toddle across the room, then ease to my knees when I reached the steps and revert to crawling. The punch line was that the family stayed in the same hotel on the way home, but this time in a room without steps. I, however, still approached the bathroom on foot and negotiated the threshold on all fours.
She never showed me the dry well. She said there wasn’t any need to look at it. She reiterated, in the sort of loud voice some Americans use to address foreigners, that it was a nonconforming system in working condition, and said if it ever failed I would have to put in a septic. She also said that she had a dry well at her own nearby country home and that she treated it once a year with a bacterial agent that kept things moving.
