I think a first house is like a first love. You’re probably more in love with the idea of it than the reality, you probably don’t know what you really want, and you probably don’t have the skill to treat it right. Possibly I’ve revealed too much.

When Michele and I moved from Athens, TX to Seguin in 2005, we got to shop for our first house. Or we had to shop for our first house. I’m still a little iffy on home ownership. It depends upon the day whether I like owning a house. Some days I would trade the whole thing for a tent or comfortable back seat, rather than mow my lawn or crawl under my sink to fix a leaky faucet again. These days, though, while many of my patients are huddling in their apartments waiting for COVID to pass over, I recognize how lucky I am.

We were moving from just far enough away that we really only had one trip to see as many houses as we could and to make a choice.  At the time, we were living in a 2 bedroom duplex in Athens. We were never sure if we’d stay in such a tiny East Texas town, and we had serious school debt, so we lived cheap and temporary, and near work, to save expenses. Up to and including Athens, our criteria had been “Is it safe and clean (y/n)”? We’d never really been confronted with meaningful aesthetic choices before, which meant I barely had the language to express my preferences, let alone understand Michele’s, when she could voice them. 

For example, I am colorblind. Not physically. I can see all the colors. I just can’t imagine them. If you want me to imagine what a space will look like if it’s painted red, you need to paint it red, then ask me to tell you how I feel. That’s the only way. Seriously. We’ve tried for twenty years, and that’s it. I can picture the quantum state of an atom in my head, but not a red wall. I’m a real catch. Twenty years on, Michele just comes home with sample squares of a few things she’d like an entire room of, and if I like the 2 inch card, she can move ahead. During our first house shopping day, every time she said “we can repaint it (fill in blank) I crashed like an overheated Xbox, and she had to give me cookie. Old houses were out. Our realtor took us to new houses, and we realized that unpainted white walls say  “Buck Rogers” to me and “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” to her. Also, neither one of us actually knew what 2000 square feet was. Too big, too little, just right. Rinse and repeat.  

Our poor realtor showed us big doctor houses and little fixer-uppers. He kept telling us what school district things were in, and it took me four years to figure out he was speaking in code for “where the white kids go”. At one point Michele and I found a place we kind of liked, and stood there talking about knocking out a wall.  Our realtor stepped in, the life coach we needed at that moment, and told us that as young professionals we did NOT want to come home from a new job a to a construction site when we got home. I will alway love R.H. Garcia for that bit of crisis counseling. He knew us better than we knew ourselves. That’s a professional’s job, but still. God bless him. 

Ultimately, he took us to his neighborhood, at the end of the day, and showed us a house we fell in love with immediately. Why? Because we were tired, and the low sun cast beautiful light into an empty space. Because we wanted a house, and wanted to eat. Mostly it was a big blank canvas Michele and I could both project our own image onto. We’d already closed on the loan by the time we realized we’d neglected to share those images with each other.  

It was actually the very first house he’d try to show us that day, and I made him turn around from the driveway because it didn’t have trees. We planted trees and lived there for seven years. 

Pro-tip: if you let the grass in your yard get knee high, your next door neighbor will mow it for you to keep his kids from getting bitten by snakes.