The Gumption to Git

When I was a young, young kid, like preschool-age, maybe, my parents decided they wanted to move to a new house. They bought a few acres of land outside town, hired an architect to design the place, and put their house on the market. Other than hiring a construction crew and packing up all our stuff, they were ready to move into their dream house.

That last little bit of oomph required, though, was missing.

A few years passed, a pond had been added, but the land was just sitting there, and we still lived in town. Not that there was much of a difference, as living by the park in town doesn't allow for too many neighbors. But mom and dad still wanted to move to their dream house.

A few more years passed, a bunch of Christmas trees got planted, but other than being useful for the month of December, the land still just sat there. But they still had been unable to find a buyer for their house in town, and owning both an in-town and out-of-town house in a place as small as that would have been worse than silly. So we still didn't get to move.

But at least the Christmas trees helped pay for college. Theoretically.

Finally, once my siblings and I were all out, off to school, even graduated from school, my parents finally decided it was time to do it. Go ahead and build the house. Now or never. And it wasn't going to be never, so it was now.

They went back to the plans from twenty-ish years before, decided that they were mostly still good. A few minor changes (no more disco balls, didn't need the dinosaur feeding trough anymore, etc), but the layout mostly stayed the same. So once my siblings and I were all gone, my parents finally got around to building their house, as designed when they had children living in it.

But at least they got around to it, if a few years late. And they did manage to sell their old house, too. But if they'd had the gumption to get going a couple decades before, I coulda' actually grown up in that house.

Of course, then I wouldn't've lived in town across from the park, so I guess it all worked.