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?

So here I was, ten years into living in the "Cottage on the Creek" which seemed silly to keep calling it that, but Hank insisted. I knew I should be thankful that he had survived, but life had never been the same again since his accident. I became the sole breadwinner, working two jobs. Thank goodness we had qualified for daycare assistance when the girls were young because my dreams of being a stay-at-home had gone out the window. I was thankful for flexibility from my employers so I could run between work and home to take care of Hank throughout the day. Hank wasn't thankful for much. Neither were the girls. I basically ran myself ragged to come home to three grumps who were not at all happy to see me nor who thought I had done enough to make their lives better.

Now in grade school, the girls were becoming acutely aware of how disgusting our house was, thanks of course to their fellow bus riders. I didn't know how to help when the girls came home crying telling me that kids were saying they lived in a sewage plant. Or kids saying that the house was one swift wind short of being blown away. The potential the house had ten years ago had long since vanished. Paint was peeling, the foundation was cracking, windows had been broken and boarded up by our neighbor as a "favor" to us during a winter storm, and of course, we lived overlooking a pond of poop.

The girls wore ratty clothes from the Salvation Army thrift shop. I had to leave before they woke up in the morning for work so they were left to do their own hair which usually didn't look too good. I didn't get back until after dinner so they subsided on microwaved chicken nuggets and Netflix shows while my husband tried to redirect them as much as he could to get their work done. Nothing about this life was what we had dreamed of.

It was no surprise when a social worker from the school stopped on a rare day I was off. She said her name was Carol Sikeen and she wanted to do a welfare check on us because of reports from the bus driver. Inside I cringed thinking about the do-good bus driver thinking it was her duty to report us. Yes, our house looked like crap from the outside and my girls' clothes were ratty and their hair a mess, but our house was clean. It was one thing I made sure of every night after I tucked the girls in. I did the laundry, scrubbed the floors, washed the dishes, and wiped down surfaces. It was the only thing I had control of in our sad life. We had frozen chicken, tins of tuna, baby carrots, grapes, bananas, bags of frozen peas, and cartons of 2% milk in the fridge at all times. Nothing to write home about, but the kids weren't malnourished.

"You seem overwhelmed," she said. "May I come in?"

I nodded. The girls weren’t home from school yet and I had just hooked up Hank's tube feeding. Ms. Sikeen looked uncomfortable for a moment when she saw Hank. Hank picked up on it right away and commented.

"What brings you to our Cottage on the Creek?"

"Excuse me?" she asked, sounding a bit surprised. I couldn't tell if she was surprised that we used such an endearing name for a dilapidated house overlooking sewage or if it was because the man in the wheelchair talked.

"I'm Hank," he said nodding at her. "Zoey and Elizabeth's father. Sweet girls, aren't they?"

She nodded.

"Well nice to meet you. I, um, hadn't realized you lived here."

"Where else would I live?"

"I'm not sure. I just was under the impression you weren't here any longer."

"What gave you that impression?"

"Well. The girls did."

"Meaning?"

"They, um, said they didn't have a dad."

Hank looked furious. "What do mean they said they didn't have a dad?" Even ten years post-accident he was still quite regretful about the things he was missing out on. The girls' completely erasing him from their lives at school certainly would not sit well with him.

"Well, they said they didn't have a mother either," she said glancing at me timidly.

I laughed.

"They said they had ran away from home and lived here all alone."

"And you believed them?" Hank asked, not hiding his irritation.

"Well, not necessarily, but we are obligated to check."

"So the busdriver made up a bogus claim about the girls being runaways and that's why you're here?"

"No. The girls made up a bogus claim that they were runaways. The busdriver actually called me because she said the girls were being bullied about their house." My heart sank.

"I just wanted to let you know that we do have resources for struggling families."

I nodded. I was aware of the resources. We were already using all of the resources we qualified for.

"I am going to leave you my card. Please call if there is anything I can do."

"Thank you, Ms. Sikeen."

That night, I worked quickly. Then I packed up the girls, got my husband into the wheelchair van, grabbed the few treasured items we had -- a photo album, a few framed pictures, the girls' stuffies, a change of clothes for each of us, and that dumb tool chest in the basement, the only thing that represented hope.

"Where are we going, Mom?" they asked excitedly.

"It's a surprise," interjected my husband, who I hadn't fully told my plan, but who knew better than to ask when I was in a mood like this. He was usually the adventurous one, but on the rare occasion I got the adventure itch, he let me go with it.

I drove to the end of the driveway, then stopped.

“Forgot something,” I said. I ran back into the house for a moment. Took one last look at our Cottage on the Creek, then slammed the door, and sprinted back to the van and began driving away.

Moments later we heard a loud "boom" in the distance and Hank looking in the rearview mirror glanced at me in horror first, and then suddenly broke into a smile. We locked eyes and continued to drive, watching the flames behind us.

I didn't know where we were going. But maybe that was better.