I’m sitting, well, lounging, on the couch in our rented house in Tsawwassen. The ceiling fan is slowly turning on the vaulted ceiling. I can see into the kitchen from here, past the dining room table we bought to fit in the space. It seats 10. Our family is getting bigger, with daughters-in-law and other in-laws. I can see straight though the window over the sink, and the colourful hanging basket on the back patio. It was a good choice to hang it there. Casting my eyes a little to the right I can see the staircase and part of the upstairs landing. And immediately off to my right are the big living room windows. Looking out then I can see the sky is a bright blue, with not a cloud in sight. The trees are a vibrant green. There is just a hint of a breeze and off in the distance the ferry horn sounds. I am quite content, a phrase my mother uses. I have felt this way in every home we’ve lived in, Dale and me. And we’ve lived in a lot of homes. Each one of them had something special about it.

Our first home together was a one bedroom apartment in Fruitvale, just below the elementary school. We rented it a few months before our wedding. I felt very grown up there, almost 21 and married. It was our starting place. I remember having our first dinner party there. I wanted to cook a roast but Dale vetoed that. He hated roast. No, I told him, you hate the roasts your mother cooks. I can do better. And I did. The roast was perfectly cooked to a medium rare and very tasty, not the charred offerings his mother put on the table. We also had our first married fight there. I washed the dishes after dinner one night and left them to air dry in the rack. Dale asked me to dry them and put them away. I said the drying fairies had to do their work, then I would put them away. Voices were raised and I retreated to the bathtub. The phone rang, but as Dale didn’t come to get me, I assumed it wasn’t for me. It was. My mom had called and Dale left her hanging for so long she hung up. The next day I went to an appliance store and bought a portable dishwasher on credit. Fifty dollars down and fifty dollars a week until it was paid off, or something like that. The day after that I took Dale’s Bronco or Jimmy to work, loaded up the dishwasher and drove home. Then I asked Dale to unload it. Argument solved.

We wanted more space but  it was the early 80s and mortgage rates were going up. Dale was an apprentice and I was a new teacher on probation, so we didn’t quality for much. We bought a used 12×68 trailer on a rented pad in Genelle. We had our first vegetable garden there. We brought home cow manure to strengthen the soil we had turned. It was literally sloshing in the back of the truck. Our neighbours must have loved us! I felt like a proper housewife there, canning vegetables and making jams.  But the drive to my teaching job in Fruitvale was long and there were days when I drove home and had no recollection of doing it. So…

We bought a lot in Beaver Falls and moved the trailer. We built a front porch and a back deck and dug another vegetable garden and had our first child. I put his cloth diapers on the clothesline off the back deck, and folded them on the carpet in our living room. We became parents there. Dale finished his apprenticeship and my job became permanent and we qualified for a bigger mortgage.

Our next home was back in Fruitvale. I could walk to the school from our two-story house, but I didn’t often do it. I had to take our son to daycare. We fixed up this home and along came son number two. My sister was our child minder, and she came to the house. Things were wonderful there. I remember taking an armful of laundry up the stairs one evening. At the top of the stairs was a large open window. I stood there, breathing in the cool evening air and enjoying the view. I can still recall the feeling of utter peace and happiness that washed over me. But the 80s weren’t done with us. Dale was a victim of the recession. He was still working but not as a tradesman. I had resigned part of my job, working only part time now that we had two children. Money was tight. Then Dale got a job as a millwright in Castlegar, and you guessed it, we were on the move again, after selling our house for less than we paid for it.

Our first home in Castlegar was a rented two bedroom townhouse. We were mortgage free, but also down payment free. We bought the boys bunk beds and moved in. I got a full time job in Castlegar at a nearby school and we started saving. We bought a house in the same neighbourhood and settled in. The boys got their own rooms again. House prices went up and we sold, making enough money to get into a bigger, better house for about the same mortgage. It was on the same cul-de-sac. We literally walked some of our belongings there. The boys grew up and Dale’s career path took him into management, and an opportunity at a pulp mill on Vancouver Island.

Cue our first house in Port Alberni. It was our first new build. It was very exciting to move into a house that had never been lived in. The cupboards were pristine, the walls unmarked. We quickly built a bedroom and a bathroom in the basement for our older son, he was not impressed that we had moved him away from his friends so it was a blatant bribe. I started substitute teaching, and the boys got involved in soccer and school sports. One of my favourite memories in that house was when the house was full of guests for most of the summer. Heavenly, to cook for friends and show them the amazing area of the world we lived in. But the boys were growing up and the house was too big for just the two of us.

Which leads us to the yellow house. There was a house in the old part of town that I would occasionally drive by. It was a heritage house that was being lovingly restored. I would see a lamp glowing behind lace curtains and imagine living there. Then it went up for sale, and so did our house. The day our house sold, we put in an offer. Weeks later we were living in my favourite house. My best memory of that house also involves guests. Sitting around the  living room, music softly playing, the fireplace logs crackling, different beverages in our hands, just talking and enjoying the company. We started going to antique auctions when we lived in that house.

Then Dale got transferred. His commute would be too long if we stayed in Port Alberni. So we moved to Parksville. Dale drove south an hour to his new job and I drove north an hour to my teaching job in Port Alberni. The large strata community we had moved into seemed perfect. With our commute we didn’t really want to spend our free time doing yard work and other house related maintenance. And our moving in changed the marketing of the community. More “professional” couples moved in as the local realtors recognized a new opportunity. But strata living started to wear on us. And as the market had improved…

We moved to Nanoose Bay, close to the marina, where Dale had his boat moored. The house was a rancher with an amazing back yard. We redid the kitchen and painted most of the interior walls. We pulled up the carpet in the living room/dining room and installed reclaimed fir hardwood. But the driving was still a lot, and I had had a couple of very difficult years. We made plans. Dale followed up on one of the many employment offers he regularly received. We were ready to move, and I was ready to stop teaching. And then he was asked to go back to the mill in Port Alberni, as a member of the management team. Now, I had asked him if this was a possibility before we sold the yellow house. He assured me there was not even a minuscule chance that this would happen. Because if there had been even a hint of that, we wouldn’t have sold my dream house. But, there we were, two years later, moving back.

The company bought our house and we bought a neo-Victorian house in Beaver Creek, just outside the city limits of Port Alberni. Our boat came back and we had full summers of visitors and family. I stayed teaching, rejoined the community theatre and life continued. The girl our older son had met when we first moved to Port Alberni became his girlfriend when they reconnected in Vancouver. But the mill was changing and Dale felt it was time to move on. He took a job with a mill on the Sunshine Coast. I stayed to sell our house. A year  and many price reductions later, it sold. I resigned my job and joined him in a rented house on the ocean. It was like living in a resort. It was lovely but it wasn’t home. We found a house in Davis Bay. Davis Bay was my favourite place to live in the area but the house wasn’t my first choice, or even my tenth choice. But Dale wanted to be settled, so I settled. We painted the main level, redid the master bathroom and had a wonderful family Christmas there. But a year later, we were on the move again. This time to Alberta.

We moved to Spruce Grove, into a rental house owned by someone Dale knew from the mill on the Sunshine Coast. It was very convenient to have an address to move to. The house, on the golf course, was beautiful. The neighbours were very friendly. We enjoyed the first wintery Christmas we had had in years. I got a job at the local Home Depot. But the drive to Dale’s  job had been understated by the owner of the house. And the hour plus drive in the winter was nerve wracking for the driver and his wife waiting at home. We gave notice and bought a little house in Leduc. Dale’s drive dropped to 10 minutes. I quit my job and never looked back. I joined the local community theatre and we settled in. Then the company Dale worked for underwent upper management restructuring and he was let go. We sold our house to the new manager, a private sale that was surprisingly easy to do. Six months later we were in our little apartment in the West End, and you know the story from there.

I’ve been mostly happy in all the places we lived. I still had the people I loved most around me, and some of the familiar, important things we had gathered to us over the years. I had a community theatre family in most of the places I lived and that really helped. Change is hard, and there were some hard moments here and there to be sure, but change can be good too. And all the changes have led me to this place and time in my life, which is pretty wonderful right now. And with Dale’s retirement date bouncing around somewhere in the future, I know more changes are ahead, and that brings a little smile to my face.