My First Home: We were adrift until a Vermont snowstorm brought us together
The lead-up to the October closing for our first home -- an antique Vermont Cape -- couldn't have gone worse.
The lead-up to the October closing for our first home — an antique Vermont Cape — couldn’t have gone worse.
Trying to look like I knew what I was doing made me inflexible and stern. The contract required the seller to empty the barn and sugarhouse of furniture, lumber scraps, and odds and ends. Now that I’ve filled those same buildings with material for an impossible number of projects, I realize the seller must have seen the dumpsters filled with regret, if not failure.
The seller and I argued at the last inspection over two mysteriously full 50-gallon drums that were sitting in the basement of the otherwise empty barn. The seller seethed. My lawyer asked me if I wanted to lose the house. My wife, pregnant with our second child, reminded me that we couldn’t renew our lease. I shut my mouth.
The seller didn’t come to the bank for the closing, much to my relief. Papers were signed. The bank gave us a jug of maple syrup, which I dropped in the parking lot while reaching for my keys. The jug shattered and spun, spraying my suit with syrup.
That weekend, sunshine and peak foliage cheered the arrival of our moving truck. Then we saw the seller’s truck parked across the street next to the neighbor’s plow. The truck stayed there all weekend. It wasn’t the introduction we had hoped for.
The leaves dropped. We busied ourselves preparing for a newborn. Snow fell.
My wife’s water broke in January, a month before her due date. We raced to the hospital. We celebrated the birth our new son, until the doctors told us there was something wrong with our baby’s heart. We needed to take him to Boston. We didn’t know for how long.
I closed up the place as best I could as a nor’easter’s clouds darkened the barn. I worried that my house would look deserted with the drive covered in snow.
I walked up my neighbors’ long drive. Husband and wife both greeted me. They were older than I thought. When I told them about my son, both closed their eyes. I asked if Mr. Mattison — “call me Howard,’’ he insisted — would plow our drive. “Don’t you worry about a thing,’’ he said.
Our trip to Boston ended quickly and, fortunately, with good news.
But Howard plowed our drive the rest of that winter. Years later, I learned that their only child, a son, had died at birth. Etta, Howard’s wife, almost died as well.
Howard stopped plowing my drive only after learning that I truly preferred the neat snowbanks I could make with my snow blower. But as soon as the snow started falling, I’d clear a path from Howard’s back door to his plow, so he could safely climb in and clear his long drive.
Over the years, I asked Howard for a lot more than he ever sought from me. Howard died in October at 90.
Etta wants to stay in their house, so as soon as the snow started falling again, I climbed into Howard’s plow and cleared their long drive.
A young couple with two children recently bought the place next door to me. The husband works long shifts plowing the town’s roads. Their place looks deserted with the drive covered in snow, so I plow this neighbor’s drive as well.
I hope it was a welcome introduction to the neighborhood.
David Petrie moved from Norwood to Iowa and then to Vermont, where he and his wife now live with four children, three big dogs, a small flock of chickens, and a tarantula named Alice. Send comments to [email protected] and a 550-word essay on your first home to [email protected]. Please note: We do not respond to submissions we won’t pursue.
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