(De)deferring the dream

When my husband and I met, one of the first conversations we had was about how we both wanted to one day have a little patch of land and grow things on it. We’d both been itinerant for a while, but we shared a dream of settling down in a place where we would “plant some roots and watch them grow”, to quote Meg Ryan’s character Kate from the criminally underrated film French Kiss, 1995.  

Still from the film “French Kiss”. Kate (Meg Ryan) hides behind a white marble statue in the classical style of a nude woman.

At the time of that conversation and several years after, we assumed this would be a retirement plan, a plan for later, much later. We both worked in DC, where real estate felt like a roller coaster that only went up. Working in DC and having a daily commute to the office was not especially compatible with buying several acres, to say nothing of several acres with an old farmhouse on them, as was my dream.

Then the pandemic hit. I had some coworkers who called it early and moved, in most cases closer to their or their partner’s families. We weren’t in the position to do that, since my husband was in a job that required going in every day. I also couldn’t be sure I’d be able to continue working remotely, once everyone went back to the office. My job is reliant on the client, and it wasn’t clear whether the client would want us to be present in corps as well as esprit. We went through 2020 and 2021 in a kind of stasis. But as 2022 dawned, it was clear that the new normal was a more encompassing one, in which workplace flexibilities would continue being prized. Hubs had started a new job, one that was requiring him to spend a week at a time further up in the northeast. He suggested we should think about moving. 

I wasn’t sold quite at first. I was nervous about moving so soon after buying our house in DC. I was nervous about interest rates going up, and the future state of the housing market, and whether my job could really *really* be remote. He reminded me, of course, that I didn’t especially like living where we did. We had great friends, but DC often felt like a city for younger people - my years of all-day bottomless brunch and dancing till dawn were long since past. And maybe it was just that after learning to live in my pajamas for two years, the allure of the hustle and bustle were just less than they had been in the past. This is no disparagement of DC. It’s a great city. Whatever the cause, the lack of space had started to wear on me, and the benefits were not what they had been a few years before. It had worn far more on Hubs, who by that time was increasingly keen to move to someplace a bit quieter than right off of 295. 

I finally told him that I would be willing to relocate, but I didn’t want to do it twice. We’d never stopped daydreaming about a little place in the country. I told him that if we could find the dream house, in our price range, within a 3-hour drive of DC, I’d consider it. I thought this would be a one or two year search. Wow, was I wrong. 

It was two days, not two years, as it turned out. Hubs sent me the listing and I fell immediately in love. The house was a Victorian, not quite a farmhouse but on five acres mixed with woods and a barn and large, tiered garden complete with potting shed and chicken coop. It was remodeled but not especially recently, and it was in an area where the prices were fairly low. All of which put it within our reach.

I shared the listing with my mom and a couple close friends. We got up the next morning for a virtual tour, and then after we both got motion sick, decided on a whim to drive up to the house that afternoon to see it in person. And decided then and there to make an offer. 

I’m pretty sure my family and friends thought we’d gone off the deep end. I’d never really discussed the idea of moving with anyone; I hadn’t had much time to internalize the decision myself. I had just told Hubs that if he could find us the dream house, I’d consider moving, and then it was right there in front of us. Even then, it didn’t seem especially real. I distinctly recall putting our chances of getting the house at “Maybe 5%”. I figured we’d be outbid, or there would be an issue with the inspection, or some such detail. 

I won’t recount the highs and the lows that followed. Our offer was accepted, and we were able to sell our house in DC within the contract period (that was a roller coaster for sure, but this time a real loop-de-loop). I don’t know if it really was against all odds, but it sure felt like it, that two months later we pulled up in front of the big red barn, Hubs in the Penske truck, and me and all three dogs in my little hatchback. 

It may seem as though the decision was rash. In a sense, I suppose it was. I wouldn’t counsel everyone to do things that way. In another sense, though, it was not a sudden plan. It was a plan we’d been making for years. It was just one we didn’t think, at the time, we’d be able to get underway. We figured we’d need to wait until the demands of career and income-earning were slowing down. We didn’t invent a new plan all of a sudden, we just pressed fast-forward on it. If the world hadn’t changed in all the ways it did in 2020, I don’t know that I’d have felt so bold. But if the past few years has taught us anything, I hope it’s that you shouldn’t defer your dreams if you can possibly help it. Try to make them real while you can. That’s a statement underwritten by all kinds of privilege, of course. But for most of us, there’s some sort of dream, big or small, that is within reach right now if you decide that you don’t need to wait.

Stay tuned for the next post, in which I will share my ridiculous approach to planning the garden….