Little Red House

I fell in love with our house back in August of 2008. Our current home had been on the market for a few months and while we weren’t actively home hunting, I always had one eye on the homes in our area, scoping out what I called out backup plan. I wanted a home that we could fall back on if ours suddenly sold and we didn’t have time to search. That’s when I found the red house.

We were driving home from work and daycare one day, when I decided to take a different street. We’d driven this way for months and I’d admired some of the homes on the other street. Something that day made me turn left. And that’s when we saw it – the beautiful, simple red rambler. “That’s it!” I cried to the kids, pulling over the car. I jotted down the phone number on the for sale by owner sign and quickly called Jason.

I called the owners that night and asked for the specs. I was immediately in love. It was exactly what our little family needed.

They had an open house that weekend and Jason went alone while I was out of town with the kids. He called me and described it in more detail. I kept telling friends and family that I could buy this house without even looking at it. Me, the person who walked through no less than 40 houses to buy our first home. And I’d only gone to one open house this time around. Still today, I firmly believe I could have bought it without looking at it.

But I did look.

I went the next week with Jason and my mom. As we walked through the home, the layout (three bedrooms on the same floor), color palette, new laminate flooring throughout, updated beautiful oak woodwork, huge fenced backyard and cozy fireplace downstairs made my heart race. I could see us living here.

I needed us to live here.

You see, I still loved our old home. We’d lived there six years. We’d gone from a married couple with two guinea pigs to a married couple with two kids and two dogs. We’d painted nearly the entire interior, we’d put in new floors and landscaped the yard. We’d pushed our kids on swings and eaten hotdogs on the deck. We’d hung our pictures, had friends over for parties, decorated our first nursery and buried our guinea pigs. We’d gotten to know our neighbors and watched our children play with their children. It was our home. Our first home.

But then we stopped feeling safe. Our immediate neighbors had grown from odd to scary. They had angry pitbulls that ran loose. They lingered in their garage and were arrested on drug charges. They stopped mowing, dumped boats in their backyard and rundown cars in their driveway. They hid from police and sped through the cul-de-sac. They let their house dissolve into a pile of trash. And they keyed my car and taunted our tiny dogs with their pitbulls.

So we needed a rescue, a reprieve from not feeling safe in our own home. We needed the red house in its quiet neighborhood with upkept homes, fenced in dogs, friendly residents. I was furious at the situation and my awful neighbors for forcing us out (and honestly, I still struggle with it some days), but the red house was our light through the whole nightmare. It became our symbol of hope. Our way of turning things around and protecting our family.

Now, almost a year later. It’s still my light, our light. Gavin took his first steps here and went trick-or-treating for the first time. We made smores on the fire in the winter and Natalie moved into her own room. Sacci runs away at least once a month, finding tiny holes in our wood privacy fence and together we’ve picked 10 containers of fresh raspberries. We watch the kids run through the sprinklers, we made it through our first flood and evacuation, and we’re having friends over for an apple-picking party this fall. Our neighbors are sweet and quiet. We’re building new memories in our new home. Our family is safe and secure.

All in our little red house.