(Bats 1.3) Drawn to this Place

Going Batty - Act I, Chapter 3 - Finding the Right House

My wife and I had married in 2019. That was one of the best years of our lives. We were financially hitting our stride, our expenses were suddenly very low, and generally things were going well. We'd done a 'pre-moon' trip to Europe, getting a rail-pass and traversing the western countries. Instead of a big wedding, we eloped. After a wonderful dinner we paid to go up to the observation deck of the Columbia Tower, the tallest spot in Seattle.

Looking out over the water, to the islands and mountains beyond, our prospects for the future suddenly felt boundless again. Pulling Mackenzie close, we kissed, looked into each other's eyes, and dreamt of futures yet to come. In the streets below us, in the foothills behind us, was the culmination of our struggles and our sacrifices. That was beneath us now, we were climbing up and out of poverty, or so it felt. No more financial woes would ever befall us again... Well, we sure got that wrong. Sheesh.

The itch to move somewhere more rural started right as I was onboarding for a full remote job. The town we lived in, despite growing up there, was no longer recognizable. What we did enjoy was the variety of cuisine, the increase in diversity in the area. What we didn't enjoy was the thousands of cleared acreage of forest and the cheaply made cookie-cutter houses with no yards. That plus all of the traffic that came with it.

The property bite became infectious, and soon we were looking at properties and sharing them over chat.

[ 'ChatApp' logs ]
[ 7/14/2022 ] 

[ TOM ]
[ LINK ]
Here look, its Betty McDonald house on Vashon.
I'll make you farm chickens and become a writer.
Too expensive though.

[ MACKENZIE ]
The farm was on the peninsula
Her chosen life was on Vashon

[ TOM ]
[ LINK ]
Look at this one - farm in the forest.

[ MACKENZIE ]
Poops I want to live in that forest home
I will be keeper of the forest

Our plot near Lake Sawyer was about half an acre. On it, we had built up a miraculous garden during the pandemic. Potatoes, pumpkins, green beans, snow peas, zucchini, squash, tomatoes, kale, chard, currants, hops, carrots, peppers, the list went on. Hundreds of pounds of produce were created there, in our tiny space, on raised beds.

Shoveling horse manure from our friend's parents' house, we had very fertile soil. 'Potato day' was a favorite with our nieces and friends' kids. Seeing them dig into the dirt and pull up bright red tubers was as exciting as an Easter egg hunt.

Then we had new neighbors right next to us. At first we were very friendly, but as time wore on it was clear that there was a major disfunction going on. I try to keep my politics to myself, but that was not the case from my neighbor. He made several comments about 'pinning me down and cutting off that hippy hair.' Which, he could probably couldn't do by strength alone, but he could by other means. I have several friends with concealed carry permits, but none of them flaunt it around or talk brazenly.

It was early summer of 2022, when that same neighbor and several others cut down their trees. Our immediate neighbor did it first, took down three Douglas firs from his front yard that were probably older than his parents. Suddenly we had no privacy in our living room, everyone walking down the street could see straight in. Then the neighbor on the other side cut theirs.

Then at the end of the block, they took out forty acres to make room for senior-owned duplexes. Two miles away, thousands of acres were taken out for medium density housing. Suddenly the forested lake I had grew up swimming in, where Mackenzie and I had skinny dipped our first week dating, was now pavement, and a hoard of traffic came with it.

A year prior, in 2021, we had been subject to a 'heat dome,' which means that all airflow stopped and heat continued to build up faster than it could dissipate. The whole region reached its hottest temperature on record. Mackenzie and I had taken a trip to Puerta Vallarta, visiting Mexico for the first time. Coming back, we couldn't believe, it was hotter in Seattle!

Our little trailer, even with an air-conditioning window unit, was above one-hundred degrees inside. Outside, the temperature got up to one-hundred-eighteen degrees Fahrenheit, or nearly forty-eight Celsius. I possibly was experiencing heat stroke and our cats were miserable. My mom's place, a few miles away surrounded by forest, stayed under one-hundred-ten.

Looking at a temperature map, we noticed one area that was still in the nineties during the heat surge. That was the north Puget Sound. Any of the areas where coastal winds could move in, where the ocean itself was a major heat sink, those would be heat-proof. We didn't have a specific area in mind, but we had camped at Deception Pass State park every few years, and in elementary school I had a camp experience on Coupeville.

[ 9/12/2022 ]
[MACKENZIE]
Ze car... it smellz like hot fish

[TOM]
the price you pay for premium salmon
next time I pack a cooler
let's clean it out when you back
OMG look at zis one
[ LINK ]
700 for almost 8 acres on Whidbey

[MACKENZIE]
That's the one
Let's go!!!
Seriously, let's tour Sunday

[TOM]
I don't think we can, my mom wanted us to be somewhere. Soon.

Despite the strengthening draw to find a better home, to 'nest' as hard as we could for our upcoming birth, time slipped away from us. Soon we were counting down the days to induction. Our little boy was heading for arrivals.

As we drove in to the hospital that fateful night, we joyfully screamed and yelled. It was a joking scream, for we knew our lives would never be the same. That the next time we drove home we would be three. Life rolls on.

It wasn't until clear until January, two months later, that we started thinking about a new property again. Heating our little trailer had been extremely challenging, and it was already feeling too small.

[ 1/16/2023 ]

[ TOM ]
[ LINK ]
Open house at 1 - look its near the water

[ MACKENZIE ]
No need, just offer now sight unseen
Whatever is weird or wrong with it can't be worse than what's happening here lololololol

Mackenzie's words aged like foul cheese. We were so cavalier. Nothing could possibly be worse than our dusty cold little trailer with broken appliances and a sagging 'foundation.' We could barely fit our baby down the hallway without needing to turn him sideways. He was growing like fireweed and we needed to find somewhere that he could learn to crawl in the coming months.

[ 1/23/2023 ]

[ MACKENZIE ]
[ LINK ]
You should figure out some good dates for us to do a whidbey tour

[ TOM ]
[ Thumbs-up emoji ]
pretty nice, should we bring our moms? It's big enough

[ MACKENZIE ]
Sure! Maybe we can send them up with luggage or baby care items
Do you want to work out a good time, im thinking a thus to Sunday

[ TOM ]
WTF, Whidbey is too hot
some of those houses went in a matter of days
we better get out there!

One house stood out a little more than the others. Mackenzie's mom, Elizabeth, was addicted to house hunting for us at this point. She cajoled with her architect friend and soon she was setting up a weekend to go visit a few of the houses we had been looking at. In particular, the large Victorian in Deception Pass struck her as particularly interesting.

Mackenzie and I looked at it and laughed. We were eccentric people, perhaps we could find ourselves in an eccentric house. Looking through old photographs, I found what I was looking for. At some point in the mid-90's, my sister and I had won a cardboard haunted house from a contest at the grocery store. It had been used for their Halloween display, but now it was ours, an imitation of a big purple mansion, complete with glowing windows and the silhouette of ghouls and bats. We'd dressed up in our costumes and continued 'trick-or-treating' clear until Thanksgiving.

Elizabeth was back from the trip to the house. We had stayed home, the tired bedraggled parents that we were. Five hours driving was not something our baby could handle at that time. However, we were intrigued. The place had a certain austere charm that was enchanting us already. We planned things out, one weekend Mackenzie would go up, the next weekend, I would. We each would take turns solo parenting, which was becoming easier by the day, but could still be exhausting. He still woke up several times in the night, hungry and screaming.

Sleep deprived, Mackenzie drove up with Elizabeth and my mom, Barb. With both grandma's in tow, they had a tour de force for the entirety of Whidbey Island. Starting at Deception Pass and then moving south, they stopped at several locations, each one unique, each with its own character and microclimate. A few were interesting, but almost everything was just slightly off. A bathroom in the kitchen, weird vibes and damp floors, too much wind, a bedroom that clearly was once the garage. Only the Victorian seemed to be vaguely worthwhile.

The next weekend I went up. I got about twenty minutes in the Victorian. I had an electrical socket tester and measuring tape. I poked and prodded, I saw things I didn't like. Only thirty volts in the master bedroom, a porch that was wobbly in spots, a bit of a steep hill and signs of erosion. Still, the benefits of the place, the aesthetic, but more importantly the location, was out of this world. I wanted to spend more time evaluating things, but I was being kept on a tight schedule.

The other places I looked at were to the north. One beach house looked like an Escher sketch inside, with every room a slightly different height... PASS. Then we went to a place that literally reeked of pet urine. There were no carpets and black stains everywhere... PASS. Then a normal suburban house with a reasonably sized back yard, but the back porch and a lot of the internal materials looked worn out. The carpets smelled, and the heating depended on propane refills. It wasn't terrible.

Then we visited an actually nice house. A brick façade, a big back porch and well kept yard. Apart from some very steep stairs in the garage, the place was immaculate. The road outside could be a little busy though, which was what we wanted to avoid. Still, it wasn't land, it wasn't on a trail system, it was just the suburbs. We could get that in our existing town. That house closed in a matter of days, before we could even blink.

The Victorian had been on the market nearly two years on and off. There had to be something off about it. One thing that we had all noticed was the place next door to it, which appeared to have gone slightly derelict. That was a bit concerning but not a total deal-breaker, over time we could either work with the neighbor of various government organizations to handle that problem. In the meanwhile, we could lean in, go a little gothic, get a little weird, have fun with the spooky vibe. Still, something ate away at the back of my mind.

We got the inspection back and there was a lot to go through. There was possible powder beetle activity in some areas, possibly some electrical issues. The porch did have sagging struts and would need to be corrected. The second water heater wasn't fully up to code. There were lots of weird little synchronicities. The attic, the inspection claimed, had "some evidence of possible rodent activity" and a picture of a tiny amount of scat. While that wasn't appealing, I had set traps in my woodshed, and at my sister's house. I knew how to handle rodents.

Still, the amount of maintenance there was overwhelming. The honey-do list would be unending, it would consume my time for years. I was poised to call the whole thing off, it just felt like two much work. That and I thought about the higher than normal amount of flies I had seen in the attic turret room. There was something off up there, I didn't know what it was, but it bugged me. I was ready to say no, to call off the whole house search.

Then Mackenzie broke down. It wasn't about that particular house, it was just about feeling trapped, stuck in the county, virtually the same zip code we had grown up in. Our trailer felt more constraining by the day, we had no room for our things, for the cats, and the baby. If we didn't move, we'd have to just get rid of everything we owned, but even that was overwhelming. In tears, she protested, "we'll be stuck in this trailer forever!"

Sitting out in the cold garage, I looked and looked at the pictures of the Victorian. I reviewed the inspection as best I could. Having just gone back to work, balancing a full time job and very incomplete sleep, I was deliriously tired. A new house had appeal, I could work INSIDE, where we had heating. We'd have rooms for everyone, we could invite over guests, I could spend afternoons fishing for salmon, the possibilities were limitless.

Looking back at old photos, I'd been going to Whidbey Island since early grade school. There were pictures of me staying at Camp Casey near Coupeville, big dormitory buildings behind me, or tanks of saltwater and sea stars, a huge grin in front of my model rocket. Then fast-forward, camping on the beach in high school, then in college, and as a young professional with Mackenzie next to me. We had come here while I was recovering from severe stress and medical problems, it had recharged my soul.

I came inside and turned on a song for Mackenzie, 'Island Song,' which was the theme song for the show 'Adventure Time.' The lyrics touch on the joys of a simple life, of enjoying nature and spending time in the forest. I took my wife's hand, looked into her eyes, and gave her a dreamy kiss. "Let's go make a home." I told her, and we smiled together.

"This is either the smartest or stupidest decision of our lives."

We kissed again. Life rolls on.