The House

Flash Fiction

The House

I saw a “For Sale” sign driving home. Much closer to my work, and John’s too! We’d been looking at places off and on for over a year.

We had decided early that we would buy a house before starting children. Looking back, the idea that “we decided,” so, that’s how it would happen, is funny. I was five months pregnant.

A house on a street that I had driven a zillion times, not only to my work, also John’s, and even to town!

The house was bigger than I was used to, but beautiful. It was at a turn on the street, where you could see across a small pond to a farm on the other side. Amazing view! Just as I looked that day, someone rode by the other side, on a horse!

Although I’d only seen the outside, I immediately decided we had to call the realtor. Catching sight of a plate with the address, next to the for-sale sign, I scribbled it down. 122 First Street. How more perfect could it get! Our first house, on First Street!

We went to see the house that Saturday. The insides proved to need some work. The house was a good fifty years old, which John loved because to him a fifty-year-old house was much better than the fast built new ones. His father, now gone, had been a carpenter, and had passed on a lot of opinions as John grew up. This one certainly worked in my favor. I loved the house already.

We bought it, we raised our children there. I lived there until I was eighty-four. Then my oldest son took over.

I still check on it, and all my loved ones, every day, looking down from the clouds as John and I drift by.