The little grey house on Jefferson Street is the place we've called home the longest.
In Tallahassee there was the second floor of an old yellow house on Ingleside Avenue (getting to call myself Annie of Ingleside never failed to amuse). The apartment wasn't really great even when I first found it, but the location in the middle of town couldn't be beat, and for some reason what I remember most is a birthday picnic in the living room and Jordan running laps around the apartment while he prepped for law school exams. Ten months after we signed the lease, termites began flying through the air vents, officially signifying it was time for us to go.
Next was a two-story brick townhouse; the appliances were harvest gold, original to the 70s construction, but I painstakingly picked paint colors and curtain fabrics that would complement the tricky shade. There was faux brick linoleum on the floor, and I loved every bit of it. A couple of friends found a beagle who rarely barked and brought her over; we named her Junie B., and the rest is history. We hosted countless dinner parties and book clubs and small group meetings in the living room and the tiny fenced backyard; when Jordan graduated from FSU, I threw a huge party at the complex's pool and clubhouse for our family and friends. It poured rain, and we had a blast. I'd never been so proud.
Then I found a tiny white cottage in one of Tallahassee's oldest neighborhoods. It was a triplex, but we had the biggest part of the house with two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a sunroom with built-in bookcases; the kitchen didn't have a dishwasher, but I didn't care. It was perfect. The kid in the apartment next to ours played jazz songs on his saxophone, which at first was super romantic, but one night he played Al Green while Sybil died on Downton Abbey, and it kind of ruined the mood. The day we moved in, I got a call about running a small bookstore down the street; a year later, in a circumstance neither of us was expecting, that store closed, the people we loved began to move, and we decided we might as well try Thomasville. We threw a Cinco de Mayo-themed goodbye party for the best friends we'd ever had, and we started looking for a house without a landlord.
Our Jefferson Street house hasn't been perfect. The backyard almost immediately became a mess we couldn't untangle, and one bathroom suddenly felt like a mistake. The fire alarm goes off every single time I cook, and a guy came to fix a leak by sawing straight through the ceiling. Bats have flown through our fireplace, and the guest bed collapsed in the middle of the night with our friends on it. (To be clear, some of the aforementioned situations might not have been the entire fault of the house itself.)
But our dog is buried in the backyard, and there's a swing on the front porch that reminds me of my childhood. We see the cutest little kids walk to school every morning, and we know our neighbors -- even the weird ones -- by name. It's the place where Jordan and I found solace at the end of our long days. If Ingleside was the law school house and Centerville was the party house and Fernando was the house where we began our Bookshelf adventure, then Jefferson has been our house. This wasn't a house built for a lot of company or hospitality, even though we tried. Instead, I think I'll look back on our Jefferson Street house and decide it's where we really began cementing our marriage, where we found retreat with each other, a safe haven, a place where we could ease into this small town life and figure out how to make it ours. It's where we binged Netflix shows and walked to dinner and listened to football games from the front porch. It's where the police banged on our door one night and scared us half to death, where there's never been enough parking spaces, especially on festival weekends.
This week, we rather unexpectedly put in an offer on a house. I don't know if anything will come of it; adulthood has taught me sometimes things don't turn out like you first think they will. In a week or two, we may have forgotten this happened at all. But at the moment, the wheels are turning, and I'm realizing -- even if this house doesn't come to fruition -- the little grey house on Jefferson Street isn't our forever home.
And I knew that, knew it when we first bought it. It was the house where we were starting this adventure; I seriously doubted we'd end it in the same place.
There's something still bittersweet about it, though, about possibly ending one chapter and season and moving on to the next. It's hopeful and exciting and sad, and I'm discovering: Isn't that life in a nutshell? Isn't it just a big old mess of hopes and dreams and grief and loss? Isn't it just all of the above?
I keep driving by this new house, the one that could be ours. It feels a little bit illicit, like an affair with fewer stakes. I'm aware I'm cheating on Jefferson Street. The other house is bigger, with a fenced-in backyard and -- by some insane turn of events -- a heated saltwater pool. There are glass doorknobs and walk-in closets and wooden floors and brand new appliances and a bathroom in the master bedroom, if you can believe it. It feels a little bit like the best of every home we've ever called ours, and I wouldn't mind at all if our offer went through and this really did become our next adventure.
But there will always be the house on Jefferson Street. There will always be that porch and Junie B. Jones and books stacked in every corner and paper brackets taped on the wall every March. There will always be that one bathroom where four of crammed in to brush our teeth just to see if we could; the sink Jordan installed, uninstalled, then re-installed himself; the cabinets I painted while listening to true crime podcasts; and the porch swing where we'd often recap our days.
Moving won't take away any of those memories.
After all, you never forget your first love.
