selling and buying

 Approximately a year after we got our septic tank replaced and Neighbour had inquired about our plans, we had decided we wanted to move on. Bill had grown tired of the oral history job—not the work itself, but the uses to which it was put. Both of us saw potential in bringing the kind of work he was doing to a wider audience. He was combining interviews with photos and scanned documents into a computer program that could be viewed like a website, but offline. The way these were structured at work was for the benefit mostly of researchers, which was valuable, but not how we would do it for people who wanted to document the life of their grandma, for example. We did a test project with the local quilt guild, which was fun for us and them and quite fascinating. They loved the end result, which was promising. We wanted to pursue this idea, but for various reasons, the university was an obstacle, particularly when it came to funding community projects. Also, I’d joined an online writing community and had gotten inquiries about being brought to local writing groups as a speaker, but the cost of my travel would have been prohibitive for them. We decided that staying would place us in a kind of a holding pattern. Since Daughter had graduated from high school and was moving away herself, everything seemed to point us in a new direction. 

We dithered about timing, but finally made a decision to call Neighbour on a particular weekend, since we’d promised to let them know when we were ready to sell. That Saturday, the phone rang. Imagine my shock when it was Neighbour asking us again about selling. I told him, ‘You won’t believe this, but we were planning to call you tomorrow!’ He went on to say that he was in Tennessee at his parents’ home. He wanted the house for them. They had no other family, were elderly, and had just gotten scammed. He’d been trying to get them to move to Fairbanks for years and they’d always refused—until that weekend. They were ready to head north. Neighbour said he and his wife would be over when they got back home later in the week. We sort of walked around in a daze, marvelling at how things were unfolding.

The neighbours came over to look around the house. I kept pointing out all the things that were wrong or would need work. He kept repeating, ‘This place has great chi.’ I laughed and commented that we were each taking on the wrong role. I was supposed to be gushing about how great the place was while he pointed out the many problems. He made an offer for a cash sale. We accepted it. That was that.

We started preparing for a major move, for ourselves and Daughter. Bill quit his job and they had a farewell party for us. I’m not sure why or how we decided we’d check out Down East Maine, but we booked a flight to Bangor and headed for Ellsworth. We talked to a realtor about what was available. It quickly became apparent that nothing there would suit, so we just enjoyed the rest of our trip and went back to Fairbanks. With about a week left until we had to vacate so remodelling could begin to make the house more comfortable for Neighbour’s elderly parents. We arrived home in the middle of the night and Daughter was flying out later that day. We got some of her boxes mailed off to her new address and then drove down to North Pole, a town 20 miles south of Fairbanks, to look at a cabin that was for sale. We’d picked up one of those real estate booklets that they had at the time and found it in there. It looked promising, so Bill called the realtor and set up an appointment for a viewing the next day. Later that evening, we drove our daughter to the airport and said a tearful good-bye. Then we went home and crawled into bed.

The next day, we viewed the cabin and said we wanted to buy it (it was another owner contract, so we didn’t have to deal with a bank). We went back to the realtor’s office and explained our situation, saying we’d need to move in the following week. He was surprised, but he said he thought he could make it happen. He did. So a week after we got back from Maine, a little disappointed but open to whatever was coming next, we moved into our new home. It was a holiday weekend and we’d rented a U-Haul. It broke down in front of the cabin. The office where Bill had rented it was closed early for the holiday, so he had to call the national number. A flatbed truck was sent to haul it away. Our truck was at the office, so Bill called someone to pick him up and bring him to the truck. I hauled some boxes until he got back, then we went back to Fairbanks for one more night, bringing the dogs and cats to their new home the following day. We were exhausted, but got settled into life in North Pole. When Neighbour’s parents moved in, they invited us to visit them. They were lovely people and we became friends, visiting them regularly. 

Bill got his old job back and we tried to decide what the next plan would be. One day at work, someone came in for something and mentioned that he’d gotten Irish citizenship because his grandparents were born in Ireland. Bill’s ears perked up and he started asking questions. When he got home, he looked into it further, saw that he qualified, and started gathering the required documents. I am writing this today in my home in rural Ireland partly as a result of us not going to Down East Maine, but going to North Pole instead, and Bill returning to his old job. And we weren’t done with Maine, yet, either, although that was almost a decade in the future.