Apple Pie or Waffles

Cindy-the-Realtor is bringing a family to see our house on Saturday and she says we’ll love them. This family lives in the Bay Area and they have been looking for country property up here for months. They have two little boys. One is 2 and the other is 6. This sounds painfully familiar. It will be 17 years ago in May that Ron and I received a call from our realtor who wanted us to drive up and look at this property right away before it went on the market. We lived in the Bay Area at the time and had been looking for country property for over 2 years. Ron and I took a day off work and (while our children were in child care for the day) drove up. We walked the house and the property and fell in love at first sight. We made an offer that day. It was a long road that summer before we sold our duplex in town and made the move in August. That’s a whole other story that involves a psychotic realtor, a grossly redundant Christmas tree, a paranoid buyer, two tenants, a dozen Japanese iris bulbs, a quasi-tranquilized cat, and a French-talking pineapple. The family Cindy has found already reminds me of us and I am hit with a wave of nostalgia for all the good years in this house. I remember the day we moved in like it was yesterday and although part of me is comfortable where I am, another part would like to go back and start at the beginning again. But the question of the moment is, do I bake apple pie on Saturday morning or should Ron make waffles? Something incredibly homey and incredibly country to offer to the little boys. I’ve heard it’s things like the smell of apple pie, the spinning wheel on the hearth, the baskets on the wall, the flowers on the table, and the cat in the easy chair that sell a house. A potential buyer needs to imagine coming home to this place. I hope I’ll be able to find another place that feels like coming home somewhere else. And I hope we can do the move this time without assistance from the French-talking pineapple.