It’s been a busy few weeks in Boston. Last night, after two days of rain followed by a blast of cold air and a new wintry snowfall, Boston surpassed the previous record for the snowiest winter in recorded history. In-between dodging the snow piles and snowplows, I’ve been teaching Writing 2 at Lasell College twice a week, juggling several freelance jobs, and working on a new personal essay for a small project that might turn into my next published work (we’ll see).
In the middle of all of that, I’ve been dealing with another of life’s periodic changes: our house went on the market ten days ago. After weeks of packing boxes, donating clothes and other items we no longer need, and cleaning, cleaning, cleaning, we waited while the realtor scheduled private showings for three straight days last weekend (there was still too much snow on the street for an Open House). We’ve quickly learned the ups and downs of being home “sellers” — after those first three days we thought we had the perfect offer, but the buyers pulled out of the deal just twelve hours later. The reason? Our house located is about a half-block from a cemetery, and one of the buyers felt superstitious.
The next offer we received was too low and had other issues. Without too much thought, we let it go.
Since then I’ve spent hours running errands during realtor appointments, and then sitting in my car at the top of the hill waiting for realtors and their clients to finish viewing our house when the appointments go overtime. It’s an unsettling feeling to watch strangers enter your home and then leave a short while later, knowing that during their time inside they debated the pros and cons of your house, opened your closet doors, and confused your frightened cats, who were locked in a single room for safety. Yesterday, when our realtor was finally able to host an Open House, I watched from a neighbor’s window while a variety of cars came and went for an hour and a half. One massive pick-up truck pulled up to the curb and continued to idle while a family of five climbed out of it and trouped into the house.
I was glad when it was over and I could reclaim my home — a home I now have serious mixed feelings about selling. I had to open a few windows to air out the house because it smelled of cigarette-smoke strangers.
So far, no new offers.
We’ll see what happens. We can’t control whether or not the house will sell, and whether or not our future plans will fall into place. So for now we’re just continuing to live our lives, with the chaos and the snow swirling around us.
