Dream Home, part 1
I'm crossing you in style some day
Oh, dream maker, you heart breaker
Wherever you're going, I'm going your way
- "Moon River"
I'm searching for an apartment in Ecuador. I look for a sign saying 'Alquilar' and call the number listed, or have someone who is more fluent in Spanish call for me to get the price and other information. I had decided on a little place with an odd floor plan but a great price and location. It wasn't a dream place, but I was excited about fixing it up and making it mine. But when the landlords - who don't do written lease agreements - decided to rent it out to their son instead, the place fell through for me, and I was back at square one.
As I drove around looking for options with my team director, who is extremely helpful and also gracious about letting me stay with him and his wife until I have my own place, I thought about scenes in movies where wealthy people look for a place to live. They waltz in with their diamonds and suits, brushing past the anxiously hopeful realtor, so they can exclaim over the height of the ceilings, the antiquity of the crown molding, the glamor of the view, or sigh over the tragedy of the faux -wood flooring or the arrangement of the kitchen. For a bit I wondered how it would be to not have a price limit. To be someone from one of those movies who finds the place of their dreams and exclaims, "It's perfect!".
Except that to be honest, the most lavish place I've ever dreamed of is the library from "Beauty And The Beast". I don't need the ballroom or the grand staircase, just the books, armchairs, windows and fireplace. Yet truth be told, I could easily settle for a smaller scale. In fact, my actual dream place would be a fixer-upper. Someplace with history and character and enough wear that other people would pass by, yet that I would see through to all its potential. My actual dream house is more like the one in the children's book "The Hidden House", which is about a home which is abandoned and slowly fills with wild, living things, but which a family discovers and loves. They clean and repaint and garden and even fix up three large wooden dolls who were in the house and witnessed the different transitions of the little forest home. Maybe it's that I love seeing what something could be, dreaming up a beautiful future somewhere within reach.
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Chrissy