We outgrew our first home now with two daughters both demanding bedrooms of their own. Yes, we could add on and we surely loved our home and all the memories it held. But this was our chance for something brand new and not our attempt to update a sixty-year-old style, times and tastes have changed.
This was an important selling point for our decision to the point we bought our new house when it was still a slab of dirt. This allowed us to add our touches before we turned the knob for the first time under ownership. When it was complete we were ready and willing to move in directly. We watched as others toured the new house next door, would this one or that one be our new neighbors?
After seeing thirty or so tour that house and those doing so varied from young to old, friendly to miserable. l left for work one Monday morning seeing a sold sign stuck in the grass, whoever bought it we will know soon.
It was the following weekend when we saw the big U-haul truck belly-up to the house, a group of twenty-somethings began to unload. It was clear they were all friends and which were the owner, directing the others to where each item goes. We didn't know then but their names were Tom and Tammy. Tom was a small business owner who was still trying to get his head above water, and Tammy was very busy at home with their three-year-old twins.
We took a gamble, one that paid off figuring they would be in no mood to cook after such a long day. My wife added to our dinner for extra company and just before it was ready we when over to introduce our family to theirs.
I wouldn't normally use their words as a "Godsend" but more as a jester friendship. whichever way you want to look at it they dined with us that evening and many times since. I took pride that they noticed the little touches we did and how they wished they had the same. Also being more established our home was completely finished with nice landscapes yards and even a pool and spa. Theirs was yet dirt and l would bet at best it would get wall-to-wall grass as an inexpensive way to keep the mud down, we were young also at one time so we get it. Their lives like ours would change drastically over the next twenty years as ours did, allowing you to build on what you have.
Our homes sat on the foothills and because of this, there was a rise of around six feet from one house to the next one. Downhill from us was a single-story home with an elderly couple as the owners, they would have to climb up the bank to hopefully get a peek over the slump-stone wall that separates us. This was highly unlikely and on the upside was our new neighbors, Tom and Tammy. They not only had the advantage of being higher but in a two-story home that looked upon almost every inch of our lot.
In the few months when we had the luxury of dirt to the side and back, then also highly unlikely lookers-on to the left it quickly became a habit that the wife and l would sneak out at night for a late-night soak in the spa and swim, naked of course. We would lay back in the bubbling water and watch jet after jet flies over us as we were directly under the landing approach to a nearby airport.
Not so close that you were bothered by the sound but under the darkness of night and in a lit pool the odds are good we stuck out to any wishing to look. This fact seemed to turn my wife on and as for me, l was natural yet loving the results it had on my wife.
We had grown so fond of this as we struggle to let it go after the young couple moved in next door. Besides a busy life and twins, the odds are they were fast asleep as soon and as much as possible.
