Dream Realized

As an adventure this is a big one. For more than twenty years my husband and I have been dreaming of owning a vacation home in Door County, Wisconsin. From the very first visit, we fell in love with the small villages that dot the peninsula some harbored by Lake Michigan, others by Green Bay, as well as the inland rolling farm fields and cherry orchards. It’s a place where people line the beaches in the summer to applaud the sunsets, where you can hop on a ferry and spend a day on an island small enough to bike in a few hours. Visuals artists, musicians, writers abound there, taken with the landscape, and a way of life that nurtures the creative spirit.

And it’s the little things that have the biggest impact. When my husband and I drive west toward Egg Harbor on County E near sunset, as we crest the hill, we hold our breath in anticipation, knowing what we’ll see—the sun blazing color across the bay and Egg Harbor nestled against the water. Some places do that to you, take you somewhere beyond yourself, that is Door County for us.

About three years ago we bought a few acres in Egg Harbor after years of searching for the right house, which we never found. We sat on the land not sure what we wanted to do with it--build on it, keep it for our kids, or sell it. That decision never seemed clear until the housing market crashed and a local builder made us an offer it was hard to refuse. We’d toyed round with building a 1800 square foot chalet but it seemed too expensive, too much of a commitment to a place, I wasn’t sure I wanted to live permanently. The winters are bleak and lonely. And I didn’t want to be that far away from my grandkids and kids. So when the builder said he could build a smaller home, 1300 square feet, and at a much lower price, we flung caution to the wind. As impractical as it was to build a house requiring us to take on a mortgage, as well as upkeep two homes when we were so close to retirement, in my heart it seemed the right thing to do. As the old cliché says, “You only live once.” And if you do it right, that’s all you need. Plus I kept telling myself I could rent the house to summer vacationers and recoup at least the mortgage payment. So late last fall we signed the contract and crossed our fingers.

We also decided not to tell our kids about the house until it was finished. That was the hardest part of the whole building process, keeping it a secret. We wanted to do the big reveal when my son and his family were back from the Philippines and we could give each kid an invitation to our dream.

When each kid opened the invitation, there was stunned silence. Not because we’d built this house, as they explained later, but because we’d kept it a secret. That was a fun moment. We still had the ability to stun our kids.

So last week when we drove up the long gravel drive, Jerry driving the rental truck with our furniture and me following in our SUV loaded with linen, dishes, pots and pans—all the things to make a home, I felt like I was living someone else’s life. It was the same feeling I had when I held my first published book in my hand. Is this real?

Let me share with you the glories of the house first and save the less glorious moments for my next blog. Though we’re not on the water, from the great room windows before the trees leaf out, you can see the bay glistening in the distance. Every window holds trees. Standing on the long front porch the quiet is intense broken only by birds, the rustling of wild life through the woods. Yet within five minutes I can be in town where there are shops and restaurants and plenty of things to do like concerts and plays and gallery shows.

The minute I opened the dark red door and stepped inside the great room, with the sun streaming in painting everything golden, I was overcome with what we’d finally had the courage to do—realize a dream.

Have there been dreams you’ve seen realized? Moments when you felt you were living someone else’s life?