The House that Love Moved: Four Years Later

Reaching deep into the pocket of my dark red Carhartt, I pulled out a crumpled piece of paper that was shoved deep into the seams. 140th, S. on Milan, W. on 13th, S. on Bluff…This simple list of directions, scrawled in my chicken scratch handwriting made me both smile, and experience a bit of relapse panic attack. Nearly four years ago to the day, these were the directions we were given by the company that was moving…our house. No, not packing up our contents and moving them from one place to another. No, our actual house. That’s right, we’re those crazy people you hear about who buy a house and have it moved from one place to another.

And crazy is a fairly accurate description for it all. I was six months pregnant, and anxious to get settled on to the family land we’d purchased the year before. The 3 bedroom/2 bath 1938 farmhouse was perfect, only it was in the wrong location. And if we hadn’t purchased it, the owners would have torn it down to build their new house right on top of where it sat. So, we wrote a check, and called it ours. I won’t go into too many details, because sometimes recalling the whole process makes my eye bug out a little. Stressful doesn’t even begin to capture the feeling. So many things went wrong. So many things. But the most important things went right. The house was delivered in once piece, placed on the new foundation, and from there, we built our family. This will make a great story to tell the grandkids someday…