My parents bought a dream house when I was eight years old. It was someone else’s dream and we finished it, inside and out from moldings, drywall, real plaster, paint, dutch doors, retaining wall and swimming pool… and back steps.
All of the above requires another few posts but my point is that it was someone else’s dream house. He ran out of money so it became our dream house. We lived next door to his grandparents, who had a barn apartment 1/4 mile down the road.
What happened to them, as they even sold us their old station wagon with the property? I learned how to ride a mower and we even had our own gas tank and I learned to use both at age eight.
I’d like to think of myself as a balancing force, though my father put me through fits in property acquisition (awful house, gorgeous patio and tennis court that he made me explain to my mother) but through life I’ve always looked for the silver lining.
We’ve hit some bumps along the road but I married a realistic dreamer. If that’s not an oxymoron sue me. He’s got a degree in physics so one foot has to be on the ground, right? His mother gave me a wood carving of a hot air balloon and said I was the ballast. That’s in storage along with all our other belongings.
Now my role is more cheerleader and devil’s advocate, mostly the latter. He doesn’t see the cheerleader part I put into his gourmet meals and everything I do every day. Will we succeed? We do, every day we live life together and turn Zoe over on the bed to give us room to sleep.
My dream life may remain in the distance, his life is front and center and right now I yearn for a small cabin on a lake, even for a weekend. Dee
Cooking with Dee 