And the dream comes again.
I’m living in a house where I discover new rooms—hidden parts I’ve never seen before. Those rooms, while dusty, contain all my favorites: vintage furniture, retro lamps, Persian rugs, framed paintings. I know my house, though. How could I have missed these secret places?
In real life, I know our new house too. I’ve seen it all—or so I believe.
One day, while I assess the many boxes, Husband enters the room. I frown, waving an arm over all the totes we need to keep—even after all the donating and tossing. “We’ll have to get shelving in the downstairs for all of this.”
He shrugs. “Well, what you don’t need often you can always store upstairs in the shed.”
Never mind that the building he calls the shed I call the pool house. He delivers this information like I know we have an upstairs in that structure out back. My thoughts flip with happiness. Another storage area to enjoy? How was I only learning this now?
I climb a ladder to open the barn-like door into the upper level of the pool house. The sight inside delights me. It’s clean, empty, and large. The girls and I hump containers out of the house. We plot and execute a strategy to muscle those beasts up the ladder and into the space. And the pool house swallows my material burdens.
We invite our new next-door neighbors over for dinner. The conversation is easy, entertaining. Over tacos, we discuss neighborhood trivia and laugh about our families’ commonalities. Husband and I share the exact wedding anniversary—date and year—of the mom and dad, and our three girls almost match their three boys in age.
What intrigues me most, though, is their acquaintance with our house—their knowledge of the history of the place we now call home. We learn details about the previous homeowners, but after The Upstairs Of The Pool House Discovery, at least we know the rest of our abode—or so I think.
“So,” the woman says, taking a bite of pineapple upside-down cake, “is there still a bomb shelter under your garage?”
*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.