In September of 2001 I did not yet have children, was not yet
married, was not yet engaged. Michael
and I were living in a one bedroom, fourth-floor walk-up in the West Village
when the towers were hit. And, like
everyone else, our lives changed forever when they fell.
We roamed around our neighborhood in a daze that
fall, grasping for things – explanations
mostly, I suppose. One weekend we stumbled upon some pictures hanging in a small storefront window - pictures of houses on wide, green, country
land with reasonable prices. Suddenly, before us, was a chance to buy a salve for our
pain – a quiet, clean, bucolic escape. A
place to retreat and recharge so we could continue to live in the city we
loved.
It took a while – many weekends with a few different real estate
agents – to find our house: a beautiful White Victorian with black shutters and a view of the
valley where the sun sets. All the old woodwork still in
place inside. We put a bid on it and learned
that two other couples had put a bid in as well. We rebid, offered more, but it
was not enough. Amazingly we were not the only New Yorkers with the brilliant idea of finding a peaceful oasis outside of the city that year.
The Catskills were in a real estate boom, one they hadn’t seen in
30 years, maybe more. Another young couple, living
in Brooklyn, not yet married, beat us out for the house. Damn them!
But we didn't give up. We kept looking, driving up every weekend, and then we got the call. Our broker had found our house. A cute little Dutch Colonial with green shutters on a hill in Bethel with a river running through it. We got into another bidding war, but
this one we were determined not to lose.
Our agent recommended a local lawyer to help us with the
closing – Jacob Epstein. His office and
home were right on Main Street in Jeffersonville – office in front, large
family home in back where he and his wife raised their five kids. We pulled up on the day of closing and parked
the car right out front of his store front window. Halfway through
signing papers, Michael jumped up and ran to the car with no explanation. I found out later he was sweating bullets about the engagement
ring he had left in the trunk.
After closing, we thanked Jay for all his help and drove to
our new house – the one with an extensive list of repairs and renovations. I was very busy with a pen and paper when
Michael suggested we stand together for a minute to take in the view. It seemed a bit ridiculous to stand still and look at a river when there were so many notes to take. But somehow he got me to do it and then he got down on his knee and
pulled out a ring.
For ten amazing years we cooked, hosted, built fires in the
wood stove, peeled painted wallpaper, nursed and changed the diapers of our two
babies, and swung on the learning-curve of being homeowners. We took long drives through the beautiful farmland and took deep breaths of the sweet country air periodically mixed with cow dung as we played the dreamers’
game of “What would you do here?” when we passed an old boarded up building, or one falling apart with a For Sale sign in the window. (All weekenders do this, by the way). “What would you open in there?” “What would you turn that into?” Sometimes the place was crying out to be a
bookstore, or a restaurant, or a wine shop. But usually, through my eyes, every building
wanted to bake baguettes and sell coffee.
At some point we sadly had to come to terms with the
fact that we had outgrown our little Bethel house on the hill. So we went hunting again in 2011, this time with kids in the backseat, and found one that
another young couple from New York had gutted, renovated,
and rebuilt ten years earlier. And in a strange twist of fate, it was right up the road from the White Victorian with the black shutters that we lost in that
bidding war. The same couple that beat us out for it in 2002 was still
weekending there, now with their two kids, only a few months older than our two kids. I had to move on quickly from hating their guts because they were about to become our
best friends.
We called Jay Epstein to see if he could help us with our
closing again, but learned that Jay
had passed away one year earlier. His office was now closed, his kids had all grown up and moved away, and the house was for sale. We
drove by it every time we went to town to pick up groceries. Sometimes Michael and I would peek through
the front bay windows to see if we could spot the little conference room where
we signed those papers in 2002. And we would tell the kids the story and they
would roll their eyes and point out that rotted wood was falling off the building.
Fast forward to the summer of 2016. We return from Spain and I retreat to Jeffersonville with the
kids, up to our happy place for gardening, grilling, swimming, summer camps, and refinishing old furniture from yard sales. The summer also includes driving by Jay Epstein’s old house every day wondering who is going buy it and fix it up and turn it into a coffee shop. Who is going to put a new roof on and fix the broken shingles and paint it and bring it back to life?
Sometimes it's nice to zone out, isn't it? Sometimes it's nice to get no reception on your phone. These are the precious moments to daydream, like when you are sitting in your car in the parking lot of Peck's staring across the street at an old run-down house and imagining it in various shades of mint green. And after about an hour of this you might say to yourself: "Didn't my husband just fulfill his Spanish Fiesta Siesta? I think it's my turn now to do something completely ridiculous."
