When I left my marriage, I moved into a small rental house with my ten-year-old daughter. The floors creaked and the windows leaked and the oven door wouldn’t stay closed, but I loved the place. It felt cozy and funky and just the right size for my downsized life.
Then, after I’d lived there about six months, my landlord stopped by to tell me he had a buyer for the house. “But I love it here,” I said, “and I’m in the middle of a divorce.”
Dan and I sat on the grass in the back yard and talked awhile and finally he stood up. “I went through a divorce,” he said. “I won’t sell the house.”
I stayed for five years, calling Dan on a regular basis when something went wrong. When he had to retrieve my pantyhose from the bathtub drain, he laughed and said, “Not hard enough.”
When the birds in the attic turned out to be a battery in the smoke detector, he said, “Not hard enough.”
When a stray cat came to our back porch and my daughter wanted to keep it, he changed the rule about “No pets.”
After we moved out, Dan sold the house. Sometimes I wish I’d bought it.