Fantasy Townhouse Shattered
Navigating the distance between assumption and reality
Two years ago, Sam and I bought a townhouse in North Carolina. We knew we couldn’t live there right away, but planned on renting it out until we were in a position to stay longer-term. The owner was (I learned this from trolling their Instagram) adventurous, athletic, and German, a much-loved professor at UNC. I was smitten with their aesthetic- equal parts bohemian and minimalist. It was a cool place. As new owners, we furnished it by shamelessly copying the previous owner’s style. Then, we hired a property manager, who found a tenant who has paid the rent like clockwork.
In my head I cast our tenant- I’ll call her Cindy, not her real name- as an excellent steward. Both the front and back gardens were tended when we left, controlled profusions of eucalyptus and rosemary, butterfly bushes, roses, and holly. The adjacent townhouse, owned by an eccentric British lady whose decorating theme can best be described as Christmas lights and whimsy, made our place seem like a Zen oasis. I found the juxtaposition of our neighbor’s cheerful chaos and our spareness delightful. Sight unseen and 600 miles between us, I imagined our charmingly contrasting states as ongoing.
So, I was shocked when we drove by the townhouse yesterday and saw the front garden choked by six-foot-high weeds and the living room curtains drawn haphazardly, a cat peering from between them. The bedroom window was lined with tchotchkes. Our British neighbor’s place still looked vibrant and intentional. Our place looked just this side of blighted.
Our daughter Sarah is moving in at the end of April, when Cindy’s lease is up. Sarah’s a plant-lover and minimalist, and my first thought was how relieved I am that our place will be reclaimed, restored.
Then came my second thought, which took me a while to get to, but it’s the one I want to leave you with.
From slim facts and weighty assumptions about single women holding full-time jobs who own a single cat, I constructed my airless alternate reality about our tenant, including a shared aesthetic and ongoing commitment to property maintenance. That’s why actual reality came as a shock.
As it turns out, an autonomous human being is living her life in our townhouse and pays her rent on time. And even though I may be itching to weed the garden, I am an absentee landlord, not puppet master. It took some shifting, but truly, I wouldn’t want it any other way.