turn, turn, turn

I don't know why, but we have never liked the people to whom we sold our houses. We were happy in our first little house - the one we brought our babies home from the hospital to - but we quickly outgrew it. We found some buyers for it fairly quickly, and that was a good thing, but they really raised my hackles. The man pretty much told us that he was hiding from the company in Chicago where he had formerly worked, as he was perpetrating insurance fraud. His wife seemed to me to be functionally illiterate, and certainly had never graduated from high school. She was coarse and furtive in her ignorance. But they loved that little house, and, in fact, he told us it was his "dream house." How nice to be able to achieve that.

We raised our kids in the house in Eastern Heights, but when they grew up and went away to college, I just didn't want to live in that empty house anymore. Again, we sold the house fairly quickly, to a young family with four small children. I couldn't imagine that many kids in the house, but I was just happy to sell it. Even though Ben never met them, he had reservations about the buyers from the beginning, especially the man. We're going to have trouble with him, Ben kept saying, and, you know, we did. He started sending us strange, rambling letters not long after we moved, demanding that we pay for extensive repairs he felt the house needed. When we ignored his letters, we received a summons to appear in small claims court. The jerk was taking us to court! He lost, of course, didn't get a penny from us, and had to pay court costs. I remember the magistrate asking him, did you look at the house before you bought it? Did you buy it online? It would have been funny if Ben hadn't had to take time off work or we hadn't had to drive back to Elyria for the day.

All this is prelude to saying that we met the buyers of our current house yesterday. We are so pleased with them. They are a young, engaged couple (got engaged two weeks ago, we learned when I asked them) and they just kept telling us how much they loved this house. We knew right away, they said. That did my heart good, as Ben and I, too, knew right away about this little house. We put in an offer the day we saw it. It's nothing fancy, mind you. Those of you who have seen it know that. But the house has been just right for us, and I think it has blossomed under our care. And now that we have met Ben and Kara, I am reassured and happy to turn our home over to them. It is just right for them, too, and they will take good care of it. Again, I don't know why, but that matters to me.