Sometimes I write about big important political stuff. And
sometimes I just want to talk about me. Hey, it’s my blog, ya know?
So this is the story of a house.
I was about 13. My mom was in graduate school studying
library science. We lived in Denton, a nice little college town in north Texas.
My mom had some kind of library seminar to attend in Austin, so we packed up
for a long weekend and headed down I-35. Back in those days, all children were
free-range children, so while my mom did her library stuff during the day, she
turned me loose on Austin with $10 in my pocket and instructions to meet her at 5 p.m. every day.
During the day, I wandered happily through Austin’s streets
and alleys. There were no skyscrapers then, just the pink dome of the capitol
looming over the rest of the city. I walked through the capitol, stared up into
the rotunda, marveled at the custom carpet in the chamber with the Texas logo
woven into the pattern. I ran my hands over the limestone walls of historic
buildings. I stood under the vast green canopy of the Treaty Oak and felt its
peace wash over me. I lunched at cheap downtown sandwich shops and window
shopped at all the boot stores. I wandered around the university and breathed
the sharp sweet smell of boxwood hedges basking in the sun. I checked out cool
restaurants and bars to bring my mom to after hours.
In the evening hours, Mom and I went to steak restaurants
and piano bars and drove around town checking out the sights. In Texas then, a
minor could go anywhere and drink anything with a parent. Good times. I
remember driving together down one quiet, tree-lined street and seeing a house that instantly captured my heart. It was a stucco house, peach-colored, with a porch and a
round window on one side like a hobbit-hole. It looked so complete, so
content, so right on its green street corner, and I fell immediately in love. ‘Some
day,’ I told myself, ‘I will live in Austin, and I will own that house.’
The weekend ended, we returned to Denton, and years went by.
I joined the Army, married, got out of the Army, and dragged my new husband to
Austin to go to college. We lived in a little rental duplex in south Austin,
and I forgot about the little peach house. After 3 years, I graduated, moved to
Houston, moved to Portland, moved to Oklahoma, suffered my share of trauma and
setbacks. Then a friend emailed me about
a job in Austin that I should apply to, and I did. After three brutal
interviews, I got an offer, packed my bags and boxes and pets, and moved back
to Austin after years away. An Austin with skyscrapers, with traffic jams, with
tech yuppies and hipsters and coffee shops. An Austin where the boot stores
have been converted to pubs and the pubs have been converted to condos. I found another
south Austin rental, unpacked, and settled in.
Then one day, driving down 45th Street on my way
to somewhere, I noticed a dark gray house on the corner. It was odd, how that
nondescript little house kept catching my eye whenever I drove past. Something
about it. I maneuvered my Jeep around the treacherous curves and wondered. A
week later, I drove past again. What a cute little round window it had, I
noticed. Then it hit me, out of the blue. That was the house. The one I had
dreamed of. The house I would live in when I was old enough and free and could
do as I pleased.
I have my own house now; a nice green tri-level fixer-upper
in south Austin, with a scruffy garden and chickens in the yard. It’s not my
dream house but it’s mine and that’s okay for now. I go to dance class with my
daughter every Monday, and we drive past the little gray house that should be peach. I look over at it and smile.
The other day, I turned off and parked my car and took some pictures of it.
There was an older man with a child in his lap on the porch. A friend parked
her car in front and walked up the front walk, smiling and waving. The traffic roars past now. 45th Street is a busy
thoroughfare, not a quiet neighborhood street as it was. But the house is happy
and lived in and loved. I wonder if the people who live there think it’s odd,
strangers stopping to photograph their house. I wonder if they know it's supposed to be peach.
