Then she said the thing that I’m sure all good realtors know to say, and it was, “well, don’t be shy to just put an offer in. You will only know for sure you won’t get it if you don’t make an offer at all. You never know.” She gave me the contact info for a buyer’s agent who lived right in the neighborhood in Port Ludlow. Of course, I was back on my toes, feeling like that was exactly what I was thinking. Why not put an offer in at a price we were comfortable with. Why not? You never know. Nothing to lose, right?
Not thirty minutes later, I got a text from M. I laughed out loud because it was as if the universe was reading my mind. I had been thinking of M because she is my only friend who is in reality, and I had already literally trusted her with our lives. She was the midwife who was present in my ear, carefully coaching me through the birth of my first child, which was a rush to the hospital situation that was supposed to be a peaceful home birth. M was texting me, because she would soon be selling a house in our neighborhood. I texted her back that I’d actually been thinking of her because we were considering making an offer on a house on the peninsula, and that it was a very long shot, but if we got it, would she sell our house? “Is it the house on Olympus? Have you contacted a buyer’s agent?” she asked.
“Yes, that’s it! No, I haven’t contacted a buyers agent”. I tried to let her know the situation as best as I could. “Let’s talk tonight” she recommended, and so that later that night C and I had a conversation with her.
I was immediately sure that if we were going to make an offer on this house at all, I wanted M on our team. Everything she said gave me confidence in that fact. She clarified for us, that in a seller’s market, there is no “deal”. The deal, or the win, is that you get the house. That’s it. The most attractive offer wins.
After talking to M, we were even less sure that we wanted to make an offer. If we didn’t want to go “all in”, maybe it wasn’t worth the time and effort on everyone’s part. We kept weighing the pros and cons of Seattle and Port Ludlow. We made an online spreadsheet to help us decide and we threw Tacoma, Entiat/Chelan and Bellingham in as well. The spreadsheet had an algorithm that helped us come up with different categories and weighed each of them on how important they were to us. We kept coming up almost completely balanced between Seattle and Port Ludlow.
C was beginning to lean more toward actually just saying “No. Let’s let this one go.” I really wanted to let him have his true feelings and thoughts. I did not want to try to convince him to make this happen. I didn’t want to be the pusher. It had been him more than me who'd started feeling like maybe we were ready to think about moving out of Seattle. I didn’t want to try to convince him, but….
I couldn’t help myself. I made my pitch. “C, I know for certain that we don’t want to make a decision based on Covid, but when I imagine living out there, now, rather than later, I see our kids getting a chance to play with other kids in the driveway. I see them in a school pod with S’s kids. With even some childcare, the time would provide me with the opportunity to pursue children’s book illustration. There is a great community of authors and illustrators on the peninsula whom I already know online.”
“Let’s do it.” he said, and I saw a clear view of his love for me. It gave me the greatest feeling in the world to watch my beloved make a genuine move like this for me and for my dreams. I did not want to miss the moment. So, right then, I got down on one knee, and I took C’s hand in mine, and I said, “Will you please buy this house for me”
We laughed a lot and hugged and kissed and e-mailed M that we would put an offer in on the house. We would bid up to the maximum amount that we could afford. We ordered a pre-inspection, so that our offer would look as good and as serious as it could. We wrote a very sweet note to the owners, and we crossed all of our crossables. Then we went out for Dick's Burgers for dinner.
The next day, now that we were all in, I couldn’t help really hoping that it would happen, even though it was still a very long shot. I made a wish over my cauldron fire pit. We texted S and her mom, to let them know we had an offer on the table and shared the note with them that we had written to the owners. We were texting with our families and dear friends and with D and J, who are good friends of ours, who had also put in an offer on a house, with M, in Seattle that would be reviewed that same day. I had not felt that alive in quite quite a while. It felt so good to have everything on the line and to be possibly throwing our life down a new and different path, one we were not sure we could manage, but one that would undoubtably be rich with experience.
A few hours later I got a text from J, “We didn’t get the house. Maybe if we had another 100K”. I knew that this would be the most likely scenario for us as well. I went to Green Lake that evening with two of my dearest Seattle friends for a socially distanced picnic, and we ate some of the yummiest food and drank delicious wine from one of my favorite Seattle restaurants, Lupo, which is owned by friends of ours. While I was with my friends, I got the message that the house went to someone else for a cash offer of 50K more than our bid.
I was sad but happy, happy/sad. I was able to be joyful that I did not have to leave the friends and family that make this city mine. I didn’t have to leave the city, which was full of the diversity that I want to raise my kids in. We may someday move away, maybe to the peninsula. One thing I know now, though, is that we are not stuck. Adventure awaits in one way or another. Also, now that I have learned that I care enough about writing and illustrating that I would leave so many things that I love just for the hope that new circumstances would propel me into making it happen sooner, it revives my motivation to do more with what little time I have.
Also, why not dream big? Universe, my dream house has a VIEW!!!
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