It's about damn time

In case it’s been a while since you’ve given it a go, I am here to report that the hype around change is real. It is hard.
 
I know because I’ve gone through a lot of it in the last 18 months or so, leading up to a really big one this week. So let’s start there.
 
Yesterday, I pulled the last hair tie and extension cord out of my beloved home of six years to sell it to a sweet young family. We met there Friday morning for the formal walkthrough, and I pointed out the thermostat for the heated floor in the master bath and how you need to turn the original crystal door handles to the left to ensure opening. All the things I grew to love over time.
 
When I’d arrived about a half hour before our scheduled meeting, the back door off the driveway -- that we’d busted through countless times over the years with arms full of Costco items or after a soggy walk with the dog -- banged open into an empty room. My footsteps echoed as I walked into the kitchen I’d installed when I bought the house six years ago. It was tiny but had all the modern conveniences and storage you need, but I thought it looked like it belonged in an old brick Tudor, with brass pulls with finishes that softened over time and a generous farmhouse sink.
 
I wandered through each room and admired the solid wood floors that almost a century earlier had been pieced together in a funny parquet throughout the house, which I’d stained a dark walnut color in the renovation. The bones of the house are made of steel and concrete, both in the walls and flooring. So when you walked on the floors in bare feet you could feel how solid the house was. You could feel its strength holding you up.
 
I admired for the last time how the light came in through the dark trimmed casement windows. How, despite how dark the house looked from the outside, the most beautiful light always filtered through – even on the darkest days. I walked into my lovely bedroom to admire the updated bathroom and generous closet one more time and then turned to look out the windows that greeted me every morning for six years and saw my dogwood waiting patiently to say goodbye. That’s when I cried.
 
After our tour of the house, I told the buyers that I was going to leave and let them be there by themselves. I handed over the rash of keys that had been given to me at my own walkthrough six years earlier and admitted I had never really used any of them.
 
Then I got in my car and drove away from the town I’d lived in for 28 years. Where I’d raised my four children and been crazy active in their schools and even, for a spell, was the town’s reporter who kept everyone updated during those long weeks following Superstorm Sandy. It was where I got divorced and sober and launched 3.5 children out into the world.
 
I got on the highway and drove about 25 minutes south to where I landed, just five blocks from the Atlantic Ocean in a town with what sounds like a make-believe name: Avon-by-the-Sea (population about 1,900, according to the 2010 census). It’s a tiny shore town about a half square mile with a charming boardwalk and darling homes lining the five or so avenues about five blocks in length that all end at the sand. It’s the kind of place where people have lived and summered for generations and from what I can tell, everyone knows everyone. I am an absolute outsider and yet it’s a position I know well. Whether I’m the hot new mama in town wearing her hoochie-koo sports bra to work in her yard or the fledgling reporter new on the municipal beat, I’ve been known to worm my way into tightknit circles. So, let’s see what happens as I roam around my new town with my dog a wave at folks on their porches.
 
I have rented a little house on the edge of town, right off its Main Street (or Route 71 if you’re a local). It’s got a generous kitchen and three small bedrooms and plenty of storage for me to fit 30 years’ worth of memories packed into see-through plastic Costco bins. There’s only one bathroom, and it’s upstairs, so things are about to get really interesting as I ride out the summer here with my 19yo roomie. He did have the courtesy the other day to hold off on doing any serious business in there until after I had taken a shower. So we’re off to a good start.
 
In truth, what I liked most about the house and why I decided to rent here for two years, is the front porch, where I’m sitting right now. It spreads across the front of the small house but is deep enough to accommodate the outdoor furniture I used to keep on my patio. I threw down the new Target rug I’d bought in the spring and bought new throw pillows for the couch and chairs. There are trellises on either end, with a Clematis vine growing up one and delicate hydrangea flowers peeking through from the neighbors’ yard. A tall privet hedge grows along the front that the owners have kept high enough that I can sit here on my laptop in my pajamas and not feel like I’m on display to all the people who have jogged and biked by early this morning. Soon, I’ll put on my sneakers and join them and walk my dog to gawk at all the houses and gardens.
 
In terms of landings, this seems like a pretty soft one. But when I first started moving boxes down about three weeks ago, I wasn’t so sure. This house has been rented for at least a decadeand when I came down the first night to move my kitchen stuff into drawers and cabinets, I was greeted with crumbs and sesame seeds stuck in the freezer railings and sticky residue left behind by former tenants in cabinets along with some fresh mouse droppings. I wondered if I’d ever be able to walk barefoot into the tiny bathroom with the yucky floor and how I’d ever be able to put anything I owned into the musty basement still filled with the owner’s old junk.
 
I went home that night filled with panic. “What have I actually done?” I thought, tossing and turning in my giant king-sized bed, which I had realized I’d never be able to squeeze into my new bedroom. “What was I thinking?” was the thought that ran through my brain all night, defying the double dose of melatonin I’d prescribed before bed for the occasion.
 
But I was already strapped into the real estate rollercoaster of my selling and renting and was almost to the top of that first big hill. I had no choice but to brace myself and hang on.
 
So I scrubbed. And then scrubbed some more. And I had SO many friends and kids pitch in to clean and schlep in the weeks leading up to the move, not to mention my extraordinary handyman and his team of miracle workers. They all showed up with a smile to help, even before I’d installed new AC units to cool the place down on hot July days (did I mention no central AC?).
 
The landlord had given the interior a fresh coat of grey-based white paint and I added cosmetic touches, like updating the kitchen hardware with inexpensive ones my sister found on Amazon and swapping out the dated Tiffany-esque light fixtures with some fun ones I picked up at IKEA. Inspired by a woman I met recently in Maine, whose new home was featured in one of their local decorating mags, I asked my younger daughter if she’d be able to put new peel-and-stick tiles down in the bathroom and she said, “Oh, that’s all over TikTok,” and went to work one day covering up the creepy flooring in there.
 
I had my windows washed yesterday to wipe the decades’ worth of grime and build up and as the guys navigated all the mirrors and pictures I have leaning against the walls under windows, we chatted about my new town. “No offense,” said the owner, “but my guys were thrilled when we pulled up and they saw how small your house was.” Most of the homes in this town are large, stately affairs with turrets and wrap-around porches and are many-windowed. They were relieved at the end of a hot July afternoon to pull up to my tiny little rental.
 
As the window washer showed me how to ensure my new windows were locked for safety, he told me I shouldn’t really have to worry. “If I was going to rob someone in this town,” he told me, “it probably wouldn’t be you.”
 
But right now, I’m fine with that. On this cool summer morning, sitting on the porch and listening to the birds and the day trippers rushing down Route 71 to claim their spots in the sand, I’m okay with it all. I’ll take this little rental, clinging to the edge of this under-the-radar beach town where I can walk, as I did last night with a friend, and eat a $19 lobster sitting on a porch overlooking the beach and come home and sit under the twinkling lights strung along the edge of my cozy new porch.
 
My daughter and I finally made it to the beach for a few hours on the 4^th of July after days of hauling boxes and furniture. We walked past a lake leading up to the beach with one of those sprays in the middle that bursts a plume of water into the air. We looked ahead at all the porches and stately lawns leading towards the ocean, and my daughter turned and asked, “Do you feel like you’re on some weird vacation?”
 
And right now, I really do. Change can be hard indeed, but it can also be worth it if you just sit back and let it happen.

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