Mi casa

The weekend was really nice. On Saturday we built a beautiful fire in the living room, lit some candles all over the house and burned the pine scented essential oil from Nature & Découvertes that smells exactly like a walk in an alpine forest, not a manufactured bathroom deoderiser pine but a real one. I love that stuff. I was preparing lunch for our builder. We love our builder Messieur G. Not only is he hard working and dedicated, but he's amiable, friendly and just one of those generally happy, upbeat people that you rarely see in life. We wanted to invite him to eat with us to thank him for all his attention to detail and to help him out with a home cooked meal because we know he's away from his family for the time he's here working on our place.

An hour before Messieur G was to arrive Seb bounded into the kitchen with darty eyes. Jay and his wife and three kids had decided to drop by to say hello and they were on their way up the walk right behind him. I didn't have a lot of time to spare. I hoped they wouldn't stay long because there was an entire lunch to prep and a cake to bake and I hadn't begun one thing yet. One of the things about the location of our house, by the lake in the tourist section of town, is that people who barely know us will often drop in to say hello with their entire entourage of visiting aunts and uncles from the North of France. This happens practically every weekend so we're used to it and it's the reason I bought a rapid fire coffee/espresso machine. I got tired of using a press and running out of coffee before it all got poured. Anyway, Jay and his family are people Seb used to work with and they are acquaintances we bump into from time to time in the centre commercial or in the street in town, but they have never just dropped by our house so we found that a little strange, especially since we just bumped into them a few weeks ago and we considered that we were all caught up on old news, who had new jobs and whatnot.

After they left and we were clearing the dishes from our lunch with Messieur G, I told Seb how odd I found Jay's visit and he remarked that Jay made a point to ask him if we were renting our house. "What did you tell him?" I asked, frozen in mid dish dry. "I told him yes and then of course he asked me the price." My chest sunk and I felt a little taken back. "I told him probably not very much." I cringed. It was the first time since we decided to move to Mexico that we'd actually put into words that we would rent our house. It was frightening to hear it discussed out loud. I hated the sound of it and it echoed in my ears for a good long time. "We don't have to go you know," Seb said throwing out his stock response to the whole situation lest the blame for this crazed scheme lie entirely on his shoulders. "We still have time to talk about it." But this as we both knew was a big lie because we had to decide soon, like two days ago in fact.

I guess yesterday made me aware of how big a change this was really going to be and how we'd have to leave our beloved home in the hands of near strangers. I felt a little like the sharks were already circling our life, waiting to do in what little was left of my dream of small village life in this little house. Our house wasn't even inspected by an agent yet and already people were asking when and where and how. Word as we found travels fast because we'd only told a handful of people and only one or two locals from Seb's old company knew about the Mexico plan and the work on the house. Jay's wife had been very interested in how the daycare center works in our town and what the schools were like and she asked me a bevy of questions about how it all functioned, which I'd found strange at the time since she's usually extremely shy with me. Of course I understood afterwards and It just all seemed too bizarre to imagine these people living in our home sleeping in the bedrooms we designed and cavorting with our neighbors who we consider as close as our own grandparents. My head was reeling from it Sunday night.

One day we will rent the place and be it to Jay and his family or someone like them, we will have to do it. Like an overprotective parent I will find it hard to not think of the bad stuff, potential smokers puffing away in the brand new kitchen or the crazed toddler armed with a black marker headed for the fireplace or the radiators that we scrimped and saved for over a year for being scratched by a careless bump of a chair. I will always feel like they won't take care of the house like we would, won't love it in the same meticulous way. This is definitely going to be the hardest part of this whole adventure. Maybe we should have said no.