Patience, I Know, Patience

Our house has been on the market for a week.

Our house: main listing photo.

A week is nothing in the scheme of things, but our hopes were up. We were told that home inventory on Bainbridge Island is scarce, that homes in our price range are being snapped up in mere days. One agent predicted a “feeding frenzy” of multiple offers and a bidding war by the end of the weekend.

Our hopes seemed to be confirmed when we saw our professional listing photos last Tuesday night and our view of our house rose literally from the tiny details we’ve been absorbed with, to a grander aerial view, thanks to a camera with a hover copter attachment and iPhone app.

Aerial view of our property. Professional photos by Cascade ProMedia.

Our listing went live last Wednesday afternoon and more than 50 realtors and half a dozen potential buyers walked through at Thursday morning’s open house. Many of the realtors had seen the home in its sorry state when it was listed three years ago. They were amazed at what we’d accomplished; we were aglow with compliments. “It couldn’t have gone any better,” our agent said.

My husband and I spent the three-day weekend unpacking at our new house, taking a break from the final projects at the old—unpacking knick knacks that hadn’t been unboxed since we put our house on the market in California in July 2011—while more buyers and agents looked through the house.

Finally unpacked: Knick knacks and photo albums have been boxed up for 3 years.

We thought we’d be signing counter offers over a glass of wine with our agent in Gig Harbor on Monday afternoon. But the weekend drew to a close and the only things piled in our living room were empty boxes and packing paper.

Unpacking at the new house.

One family had been on the verge of making an offer. After sleeping on it, they decided they needed to be closer to the town and ferry terminal. Another didn’t like the bedroom configuration. Another thought the yard was too much work.  My husband and I can add a fence around our rooftop turf but we can’t do anything about those issues.

Sometimes all we can do is wait. And waiting is uncomfortable.

A dear friend is waiting to hear about a job. She was one of two finalists. She should’ve known two Fridays ago, then last Wednesday, but still no word. “Patience, Iago, patience,” I counsel, finding a villain’s (Jafar from Alladin) words useful, not just this once, but often.

Patience, I know, patience, is what I must tell myself when patience feels a luxury.

I don’t need scores of people tromping through our house. We certainly didn’t experience that in California. After the initial open house we had only one family come through. Five months later, after selling their home, they made an offer. The market is no longer abysmal (we lost so much money on that sale), but our house in Boulder Creek was unique, and so is our house on Bainbridge Island.

Our former house in Boulder Creek California.

I don’t care if the business cards keep piling up on the kitchen counter—evidence of frequent showings—what I do care about is finding the next right owner for this house.

The pile of business cards grows.

It’s easy to appreciate the décor and mid-century modern design and studio apartment now that the house is renovated; it will only need routine maintenance. But if you’re not a gardener, it’s not easy to see a quarter acre of landscaping and another quarter acre of island wild, and embrace the responsibility and challenge of maintaining it.

Our mid-century modern home restored.

I know there’s a gardener out there who will be amazed at the variety and unique collection of rhododendrons, Japanese maples, and perennials thriving on this property. There’s a gardener who will delight in discovering the richness in this land and will happily dig in the trowel to keep the weeds at bay, one who will stop to look up at fledgling eagles crying out overhead, will step away from the Spotted Towhee’s ground nest accidently discovered at the base of rhodie to pull out her camera and snap a photo, who will harvest raspberries and rhubarb and serve them to his family, who will scatter seeds from the columbines and alstroemerias in the wild side of the yard, one who will catch a glistening glimpse of the Sound over the neighbor’s roof and the great billowing clouds skating across the sky.

Spotted Towee hatchlings and one egg. Discovered 5/27/14.

Rhubarb and raspberry beds in foreground.

I’m looking for a gardener who will kneel in the dirt with her Hori knife and give thanks for the great privilege of stewarding this land and dwelling in this place.  

I do what I can to find that gardener: send Facebook messages and email to everyone I know in the Greater Seattle area with a link to our listing, email our local nursery and Rhododendron Society chapters in Oregon and Washington.

Rhododendrons off the master bedroom deck.

 “Your house will sell,” our agent says. She would buy it herself if it weren’t for the yard work (my point confirmed) she jokes. I too know it will sell, but I want it to sell soon, and at a price where we actually make some money, so we can get on with our lives. We have a project house to fund, and we’re counting on the proceeds from this sale to finance the project. Our livelihood depends on it.

The project house awaits.

I will buyers to materialize, imagining them wandering the yard in its June glory. My husband and I walked through in naked November, the maples bare, the perennials like Persephone, underground for the winter. And still we knew this was the next right place for us. Who will come after us?

A new path leads from the driveway through the backyard to the laundry room.

Please share our listing and help us find out.

A Wholly New World

The Comet Ace is headed from Tacoma to Portland, cruising through the Sound at a speed of 16.7 knots. The Evergreen State oil tanker has been sitting at the Manchester Naval Fuel Dock since 15:50 yesterday. The Carnival cruise ship was docked in Seattle this morning, but is long gone.

I know all this thanks to marinetraffic.com (thanks to my prayer partner for telling me about the website) the perfect place for a nosy neighbor like me to find out who and what is plying the waters between my new home in Manchester/Port Orchard and Seattle.

 

The Evergreen State in port at the Manchester Fuel Dock

Today I took my first walk to the local library, several blocks downhill. A block southwest Mt. Rainier and the entirety of Blake Island are visible, but turning my attention from the natural world, I saw newly remodeled homes, new homes under construction, derelict homes hidden behind derelict fences, empty lots of grass, and just two homes below mine: a 50 –year-old rusted trailer with an attached lean-to.

This is a neighborhood in transition. And I am now a part of it.

It’s also a neighborhood alive: My next-door neighbor weed-whacked the grass in our drainage ditch before I moved in on a day I just happened to be here bringing a load of belongings in my minivan. He and his wife have two have young children who play and ride plastic John Deere trucks in their yard, making the lovely squealing sounds of childhood, and have a best friend across the street.

The mother of the best friend introduced herself and her son last week with a plate of chocolate chip cookies. Right now, two teens are throwing a football in the vacant lot across the street, talking the whole time (one more than the other). Last week, in the vacant lot above me, I saw two pheasants land and browse for food in the tall grass while I was pruning the long-neglected bushes in my garden. The next day, a man mowed the field down in a riding mower.

Male pheasant

Riding mower man 

A couple is walking past the house right now, headed possibly, to the one restaurant or one pub (or maybe Carmen’s Hair Haven) near the waterfront. You don’t have to be at the waterfront to see the water. The Seattle skyline and Cascades are visible to the east from our living room, dining room, my office, the upper deck and lower patio.

Our view with the help of the zoom lens

In the week we’ve lived here the view has been hazy in the mornings, the orange sun lighting the eastern horizon that’s mostly shining water that gradually, like my own blurry eyes, comes into focus to reveal the distant landscape, skyscrapers, and mountain peaks.

The morning sun heats the dining room and each day I step out of bed to find an array of cats (we have five) sprawled across the carpet baking in the sunspots in varying stages of what I call comatoast.

Right now I’m sitting on the second story deck of our rental house with its glass railings, looking over the roofs of neighboring houses at an expansive water view while my husband is camped out overnight, yet again, at our old house, working heroically on the last items of our remodel and move.

 

Our deck railing and neighbor with kids house

As the sun sets with help from a zoom lens

I join him most days, but I get tired, hungry, cranky, twice as fast as he does. His patience and stamina (thanks to wasabi peanuts and 5 hour energy), determination and drive know no bounds. He’s always been this way, wholly devoted to the project at hand. And now, the project is our livelihood, so it seems even more right and fitting that this time giving his all will be appreciated and rewarded.

A number of people have asked why we’re moving, and I suppose I haven’t been clear enough: We can’t afford to stay.

We need the money. My corporate executive husband could not find a job in his field. My writing retreat income (our sole income) was just over $10,000 for the year. All our resources are committed to our business, and they’re not enough, so we are selling our assets: our home.

It might’ve been a last desperate act, a resignation and giving up the one thing we could call our own.

But it’s not. It’s another bold step into the unknown, into the I-don’t-know-what’s-next-but-let’s-find-out life we’ve been living for almost three years now (when we first made the decision to let go of Cisco before it let go of Kevin). I am betting my life on my husband, and that seems right and fitting, too.

There were moments when I was afraid to trust that much, times when I wanted cosmic insurance, days and years when I wanted the future laid out before me like hopscotch squares so I could know the rhythm and sequence and pattern and follow it and win. I am thankful that the story of order and fear is part of my past and not in my present, and I pray not in my future.

What I do know is that our house—I’m already calling it “my old house” looks incredible—as we’ve hired a crew to do landscaping and refinish our wood floors (things we just couldn’t do ourselves in the timeframe we have) as it heads for the MLS. I am confident it will sell quickly, and I’m asking the universe for a big number. We could use it.

 

Our rooftop turf in the mist

The landscapers have redefined all our garden beds

Our living room with refinished original oak floor

We have permits in hand for our project house and we’ll be financing that construction with the proceeds from our sale, and my husband will again be using all his creativity and imagination and his hands and arms and drills and saws to bring another derelict property into glory.

 

Repaired waterfront deckat the project house

landscaping work at the project house

Today I was pruning years of dead branches off the few roses at our rental house and thinking about the love and care it could use as well (maybe that’s why we’re the new renters). Standing under a cloudless sky, Puget Sound and Seattle beyond it in my sight, I thought of a line in a Taize chant “you alone O Lord are holy” and how a former pastor (now my soul sister) changed the line, so that I and everyone at our church learned it this way: “you and all your world are holy.”

 

Rainbow at our rental house on moving day

Creator and creation: holy. The roses: holy. The Cascades: holy. The home my husband and I transformed: holy. Our relationship transformed by our united purposes and cleaving together as one as never before: Holy.  

First morning in our new house: two bald eagles overhead

Insomnia and the Next Right Answer

I have big news and I’m not sure to share it by referring to Parker Palmer and the Quaker notion that “way will open,” or by saying that my husband and I are moving on to “the next right answer,” a phrase used by Dewitt Jones (a former National Geographic photographer) in his video Everyday Creativity, or with my husband’s suggested headline “Insomnia Pays Off,” or to quip that it was easy for Jesus to tell his disciples not to worry about tomorrow, and to be fine with the fact that while foxes had dens, he had no place to lay his head—after all, he got to store his stuff (carpentry tools included) at his mom’s house—or to write that all this happened because our water was turned off for the day.

So I’ll start with this: Until two Mondays ago the word Manchester most easily called to my mind British soccer, followed by the name of a branch library in Kitsap County where I reside. But the Monday our water was turned off for planned neighborhood improvements, my husband, youngest daughter (who was home from college on spring break), and I went on a driving excursion through the southern part of the Kitsap Peninsula stopping short of the bridge to Tacoma, checking out the towns of Port Orchard and Gig Harbor, cruising past homes that had views or incredibly low prices to recommend them.

We drove into the village of Manchester southeast of Port Orchard, with its smattering of commerce: library, post office, restaurant, public boat lunch and waterfront park, the houses stacked on the hillside looking out onto incredible water views that include the Seattle skyline, Cascade range, Mt. Rainier, Bainbridge and Blake (a state park) Islands, and thought we could be at home here.

 

Port of Manchester with Seattle Skyline in the background.

One house we saw was tiny on a tiny lot and would need an addition that would take it to the property line setbacks. Another was a manufactured home on a rutted dirt lane surrounded by junkyard homes. Driving around we saw a great mix of home types, a lot of new construction, it was an area worth investigating: both for us to live in and for our home renovation business.

Water view from a house in Manchester for sale.

The house for sale that inspired our trip to Manchester.

It would be a waiting game: wait until we finished remodeling our house, had put it on the market, had an offer and a contract in escrow. Once all that was in place, we would see if there were any houses on the market for us to buy that had what we wanted: a low price, a water view, a location near the renovation work that is going to be our new livelihood, and then we’d need to move pronto!

While waiting, in addition to painting the house, I spent much of the week gifting furniture to community members on Buy NothingBainbridge (there are gift economies cropping up all over and you can read more here) still planning to downsize to a house about half the size of ours.

Jesus asked some of his potential followers to give away everything they have. Easier said than done, especially since I’ve been the one with the big house, the stable life, the recipient of many things: much of it sentimental, some of it practical, some from parents, some from children, some my own collecting. I parted with much of it before moving to Washington, and with even more in the last months, taking photos of the items I want to remember, and sending them on with love and thanks that they will be used and appreciated elsewhere.  

If you read my blog regularly you know I have insomnia and you know I troll Redfin real estate listings to self-soothe, finding places I might live. Last Thursday night was no exception, unable to sleep, I launched my browser, but not finding any new listings, I remembered that months ago looking for comps for the waterfront property we’re fixing up, my husband came across a listing for a waterfront rental.

Were there any rentals in Manchester? Yes, one “Amazing View Manchester Home” that also accepted pets (we have five cats, two on loan from our daughter). I bookmarked it, and on a whim, at 1:30 a.m., emailed the listing to my husband. Before I’d even walked up the stairs the next morning, Kevin was on his way down, computer in hand to meet me: “I think we should rent that house now,” he said. “We could use the money from the sale of our house to fund our business, we could move over there gradually, and you could get some sleep.”

And in that moment, as Parker Palmer writes in Let Your Life Speak “way opened.” I called the property manager Friday morning and we scheduled a showing for Tuesday afternoon. Kevin and I toured the property at 1 p.m., we were halfway to home, pulling into the Costco parking lot, when the manager called at 3 p.m. and said the owners (a retired minister and his wife) had approved our rental application including our five cats.

We’re landlords ourselves, but for the first time since 1987, we will be renters. And I am so grateful. I recognize the incredible blessing, that this is truly “the next right answer,” the one that comes from continuing to look at a situation from different and unexpected angles.

Now I know where I will live for the next year. I know once we finish up our home on Bainbridge Island, that the remodeling my husband and I will do in the next year will not be in our home. I know that I will not have to reclaim a huge yard from years of neglect.

 

The rental house, like our current home is blue, situated on a corner, and on a street named for a tree.

I know that we will be moving closer to the county seat, closer to the veterans we are hoping to employ, closer to a larger pool of distressed homes that we can have a positive impact on…

We will be within walking distance of the local library, and I plan to volunteer there, leading writing workshops if there’s a need or desire. Who knows what way will open there for us to continue to define a vocation and life that though it includes a Seattle view, does not look to Seattle for employment or definition.

The house itself is the size of our current home, and I gave away a bit too much furniture, but I kept our outdoor chairs, and we’ll be there this summer lounging on the second story deck, its clear paneled railing offering a safe place for our cats to be outside and sunrise and Seattle views. I can see water from the kitchen window and the driveway. The vista is wide open as the future.

The deck from the rental and water view (Seattle behind the tree).

The day after we signed our lease, our nephew (who’s worked on our house the last two summers) who is graduating from college in May called to say he is definitely coming to live and work with us for a year beginning in late June. He’ll be our first full-time employee and thankfully, we’ll have plenty of room to share our lives with him.

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Husband and nephew finishing kitchen remodel last summer

There’s even a place to park our boat, which has been nonoperational since we moved to Washington. We’re going buy an electric motor (our gas one is broken), because the community boat launch is less than half a mile from the house. And who knows, we might be able to see the orcas from the water when they travel toward Vashon Island.

There’s much more to say, but this post is already long, and I’ll be too busy to blog as we are now in “go mode” working hard day and night to finish our Bainbridge house as fast as possible and pack up.

We pick up the keys to our house in Manchester on Monday. I’m so excited and there’s so much to keep track of that I still can’t sleep. But my husband is right: insomnia does pay off, sometimes.

Until I blog again: Here’s to the next right answer.

 

Our rooftop turf...who will enjoy this next?