Search Topics
Claiming what I wanted as mine
Submitted by: L.D.W.
New JerseyI am a 38-year-old writer, wife, and mother of two teenagers.
My husband and I were in our early twenties, raising twin toddlers, and barely making ends meet. We wanted to find a home in a town where our children could thrive academically, and be safe and happy as well. The problem was that because of my husband’s occupation, we could not live outside of our expensive state. However, we engaged a realtor and began our house hunt, hoping to find a viable starter home.
We looked at many, many houses that did not meet our needs or desires. We wanted more for our children, and I was beginning to lose hope that we would be able to afford to give it to them. Then, one weekend, we drove up to our area of choice on our own, with the realty book in hand, and located a new listing. The house was a foreclosure and in really horrible shape, but it was on four beautiful acres with views of the Poconos, and in a rural area with a great school system. We immediately called the realtor and told her we wanted that house. She called us back that evening an broke the news that it was under contract.
For three months, I applied the LOA, envisioning this house with our family living in it and making the needed improvements. I began to pack. I told our realtor each time we looked at a house that it was very nice, but I needed to keep our funds available for our home, which would be back on the market soon. She thought I was nuts, and after three months of this, my husband was beginning to lose patience with me. Yet, I kept telling him, “It’s ours. Nobody else is going to live in it because it’s our house. Wait, and you’ll see for yourself.”
He did wait, and he did see. Three months from our first visit to the house, we opened the realty book and it was there, back on the market due to irreconcilable differences between the bank and the people who had made the offer. I am sitting in that house now as I write, enjoying the sound of the rain as it falls in the front woods nature has been generous enough to allow us to steward.
Now I need to publish the novel I just wrote. Send me a good thought, will you?