Cottage on the Creek
It didn't start out that way. The house, I mean. When we bought it we had big dreams for it. It was a bit smaller than what we had imagined but it would work for our little family of four. It was on a hill overlooking a little creek and if I squinted out the window while I sipped my morning coffee and watched the sunrise it almost looked like the cover of a magical storybook. The house needed a bit of work, but Hank and I had never been one to shy away from projects -- in fact, they kind of excited us. I still remember the day we closed on the property and how we drove directly to the large chain home projects store to pick up necessities to start. It all seemed like an adventure, the way everything with Hank had seemed. He empowered me and buying our little "Cottage on the Creek" as he liked to call it seemed like the perfect start to our adventure in our new town. We knew where we were going in life and knew how to achieve our dreams. This had entailed packing up and moving 500 miles away from family so Hank could start his new job. I remember stopping for a moment and soaking it all in and glancing up and whispering a thank you for all the things we had going for us - a wonderful husband with a new job, a set of adorable twin girls I would get to be a stay-at-home mom to thanks to Hank's new job, and a Cottage on the Creek with nothing but potential. How was I to know that just weeks later Hank would get into a car accident on his way to work leaving him paralyzed? How could I have guessed that our decision to "just go without insurance" until Hank's probation period ended would leave us indebted to a medical system for the rest of our lives? How could I have known that the tools and paint and plans for our Cottage on the Creek would sit in a corner of the basement unused because without Hank, money, or an ounce of ambition fixing up the place was going to be the least of our concerns? How was I to know the city was going to rezone things and begin emptying their sewage from the wastewater treatment plant into our creek making our home virtually unsellable?
