Last cleanup and ready for its new owner…

The terraza where we spent so many hours sitting, talking, watching the hummingbirds, listening to the fountain. Deserted and quiet, but its new owners are on the way, to give it new life and turn it into a home again.

End of an Era

After we moved out of the old house, it became harder and harder to go back there – to keep an eye on the place, give instructions to the increasingly lazy gardener (who knew his time there was limited), keep the pumps and water systems running, pay the bills, keep the property from slowly succumbing to the encroachment of the vines and plants that grow like weeds here, even in the winter.  We both knew we had to check in over there every few days and make sure there weren’t any leaks or disasters, but seeing it vacant was hard, after we’d put so much energy and money into it. And at the new place, there was the noise and dust and invasion of the remodeling. It wasn’t like you could go back home and sit on your terrace, drink in hand, and enjoy the new digs in peace. It was hard to do our obligatory visits to the now-vacant house with the dusty “Se Vende” sign out in front. The neighborhood kids had pulled all the numbers of the agency’s phone number off the sign, making it look even more deserted and forlorn.

Every time I went back there, I had to confront the mystery of why I was so ready to leave my once-beloved home behind, which was complicated for me and very confusing. I could remember placing every plant and rosebush in the soil, the dinner parties we’d had there, the houseguests who were discovering our little corner of Mexico for the first time. I could remember figuring out where each tree or that shrub should go, measuring this and planning that, remodeling the kitchen, my bathroom, building the casita. Every square inch of the place has the mark of my hand and my eye and my design sense. But for some mysterious reason – my mother’s death and the finality of being free of having to care for my parents? Having inherited much of their furniture which just didn’t really FIT? My own heading into toward my seventies and wanting something very different for myself? Who knows, but in spite of how hard it was to say goodbye, I was ready to do it.

After going through the emotional part of deciding to sell it, to have hardly any showings once we had signed the listing papers was a big letdown. We could say to ourselves over and over again “well, people are afraid to move to Mexico now”, “things in the States are bad and people can’t sell their houses up there” or whatever we thought would make us feel better as of that moment. But the reality was that the house was on the market for over a year and we knew we were going to have to reduce the price to a ridiculous level to even think about selling it. So once again we felt very stuck, and the longer it went on the more frustrated we got – with the real estate people, with the economy, with the gods, with each other. Living with the disruption of the ongoing work here at the new house most certainly did not help.

But to our amazement an offer came in – not what we had hoped to get for the house, especially given that we had poured a ridiculous amount of money into it fixing and remodeling (thanks for the remodeling gene, Mom). But the thought of really being able to close that chapter and move on proved to be far too tempting. After just enough negotiation so that all parties felt that they had been able to get the best possible deal, we signed off on it and as of two days ago, the house now has new owners and we can get on with our lives. They wanted a quick closing and so did we, and last week, after a whole bunch of work scrambling to get all the requisite documents together, the deed was done, and the house is finally sold.

It is interesting how you can live in a house and feel that it is home, enjoy fixing it up and making it your own, work to get things “just right” for yourself visually, practically and dare I say spiritually – and then one day, just like that, you wake up dissatisfied and feel that you are ready to move on. It’s like a lover, or a marriage gone wrong, I guess – things can appear to be fine one minute and then the next minute, for a variety of reasons, the whole thing is just over with and there is no going back. I swore we wouldn’t even START to look for a new house until we had sold the old one, but curiosity got the better of me – Arnold too – and we went out looking and of course once we saw the house that was going to become our new casa we moved ahead full steam not only to buy it, but then immediately to undertake a seven-month remodel that almost finished both of us off. The house was already bigger than the old one. Truthfully, in my renegade Princess heart I loved the idea that whereas everyone around us, now in their sixties and seventies, is downsizing, we found a house that was bigger AND to make matters worse, we added a couple of rooms to it and redid the kitchen.

Fortunately, the couple who bought the house have turned out to be delightful people and they appear to really love the place, which is gratifying. I am happy that the house now has new owners who can take it to the next level, and I’m on to whatever comes next in my own life. The remodeling of the new house is not yet complete but we can see the end of it, truly, within the next several weeks, and the daily workers have all gone, so at last I am getting a sense of what it is like to live here without feeling the need to be dressed and presentable pretty much all the time. All that remains is the installation of my stove hood, which requires a part that’s on order, and finishing up of the little bathroom in my office, also needing a faucet that has been ordered, and once those items show up, there will be a final flourish of workers running around for a day or two and then that will, for all intents and purposes, be it.

With no more workers ringing the gate bell at 8 a.m., and days of being able to be here without interruptions, I have started my exercise program up again and have begun the process of setting up the ceramics studio outside in the little casita, which Wendy insisted (rightly) that we do as soon as the workers were gone. It made sense since they were no longer using both the bathroom out there and the rest of the casita for storage of all their tools, coils of wire, and other supplies. So that lies ahead of me, organizing all that and hopefully getting back to my ceramics and whatever other art and craft projects seem like they might be fun.

Arnold had yet another nasty skin cancer which he decided to have removed in New York, so he has been gone for two weeks dealing with that, and I remained behind to deal with the business end of selling the other house and to be present for the closing. As I write this, he is on his way back and should arrive later tonight. He saw opera, went to concerts, saw a couple of museum shows he was curious about, and of course did a bit of shopping and on the days when it wasn’t snowing, walking all over New York as is his wont. Yet even he is saying he got sick of the really cold weather there this winter, and I know when he gets out into the fresh air, even heading for the parking lot at the Guadalajara airport with Luis, I can imagine him taking off the heavy woolen New York coat, then his heavy woolen Nueva York sweater, stowing the luggage in the back of the car, burden lightened and relieved and happy to be heading back up the hill towards Lake Chapala. They assured him they got all the cancer off his scalp and we can only hope and pray that it’s true, and we can begin to really settle in to our new place, finish the last of the unpacking and organizing, and enjoy the bright Mexican spring.