He had always dreamed of getting married, having kids, owning a home, fixing up a home. She hadn’t not dreamed of these things. She’d been working on other dreams. She had dreamed of not moving any more times. She dreamed of Chicago, and she moved to Chicago. She did not dream of leaving.
When they were still dating, they went for a walk around his neighborhood in Pilsen; he showed her a house he had once wanted to buy. They married, they talked about kids, they looked at houses, there was one he was sure he wanted to buy; the wife was less sure about that particular house, that particular house smelled like pee, needed more work above and beyond pee remediation than she felt prepared to endure; they began the loan application process, decided together that it was not a good idea to buy this particular house. They tried to have kids (briefly, so briefly), that didn’t happen, the wife was not moved to put her body through what might be necessary to make that happen, they looked into adoption, the husband decided he wanted to go to art school, they decided together to table everything related to kid making. They moved to Texas, he went to art school, decided children were the worst, So glad we never did that, he said, he graduated from art school, they moved to New York City so the husband could be an artist. They moved to New York from Texas knowing they might not stay forever, so she said I have one more move in me. He indicated that he understood.
They found an apartment in Brooklyn that they loved but which was too small and too expensive to be forever, they lived there amid boxes they never unpacked because where would that stuff even go, they heard about a small historic city upstate, a short train ride from the city. They visited the historic city, were charmed by the historic city, views of the Hudson, historic architecture, they went back to the historic city, they looked at historic houses, they picked a historic house, they went through the loan application process and all the other home-buying processes and they bought the house and they closed on the house and they got the keys to the house and they took that excited We’re homeowners now! photo that you’re required to take by the front door on the day you get the keys to the house.
The husband gutted and rehabbed the bathroom to her liking with a claw-foot tub and penny tile on the floor. It was no trouble for the wife to frequently tell the husband how happy and grateful she was to him for making her this super sweet, shiny new bathroom. She was so continually delighted by it that it would have been trouble for her not to. The husband also gutted and rehabbed the kitchen to her liking, with subway tile and a farm sink (with a disposal!) and a fridge (with an icemaker!) and a dishwasher and cabinets he built himself, ones that hide the trash and the recycling and the dog food bin, and he refinished the floors upstairs (there’s an upstairs!), for which she was also grateful, and he patched and painted the walls and the ceilings and he fixed things when they broke and she was grateful for all of it. They decorated together, but the decorating budget was limited, so it came together piecemeal. They hung art and put their books on shelves and they got their first new sofa and they got a new bed and they set up a guest room, that had been a dream of hers, to have a guest room that was only a guest room, and not a guest room and an office, and they now had two separate rooms for these functions, a dream now realized. Plus a little backyard and a carriage house/barn, which was a fun thing to say, Yeah, we have a carriage house! or It’s in the barn! Who lives in a city and gets to say they have a barn? The husband used the carriage house/barn for a woodshop and whatever else. Her grandparents had a barn filled with a hundred years of miracles.
A few years later the husband has a new dream, having let go of two parts of the original three-part dream. Maybe we could co-own the house, he says.