2. home

December, 2003; October, 2005

A beautiful two-story house with white columns on both porches and a palm tree in the front yard stands on a tree-lined street in a historic Columbia neighborhood. I drew the design of it on a napkin in Shoney’s; the builders were sitting across from me, and Caroline’s eyes were lighting up as she suggested changes she would like me to make.

“We can do that,” the builders nodded as they stared at the napkin.

It was Caroline’s idea to try to live downtown when we moved to Columbia. We didn’t really think we would be able to afford it.

Before we married, I had $80,000 in savings. The money came from several investments my parents had helped me make as well as the money I had saved while working two jobs in high school. After we married, we put a majority of that money down on a house in a suburb of Charleston; a cookie cutter home, in a neighborhood full of children and cul-de-sacs. Two years later we sold the house, quit our jobs, and moved to Columbia.

One day, soon after moving, Caroline and I were driving down a street filled with turn-of-the-century homes, when she saw and empty lot between two houses. The sign advertisement near the street said, “Land for Sale.”

“Stop the car!” she shouted. We wrote the number down and decided to call later that evening. Our hopes weren’t too high, but I could see the glimmer in her eyes and the smile she tried to hide as we talked about the great location.

That night, I called the number on the sign. The man on the other end of the line asked me more questions than I asked him: “Why did we move to Columbia? What did I do?” How old was I?”

I felt like a kid playing grown-up. He didn’t tell me the price of the land, but asked if we would like to meet at Shoney’s later that week.

“This can’t be a good sign,” I told Caroline. “He’s trying to save us the embarrassment of knowing we can’t afford it.” Still, we spent the rest of that week disinterested in all the other houses we looked at, and all the neighborhoods we drove through.

We walked into the meeting anxious and uncomfortable. There were two men waiting on us, both with gentle faces and heavy Irish accents.

“So, you’re a pastor, are you?” the taller one asked.

I always felt defensive when someone asked me that. Usually the next statement was, “A little young, aren’t you?”

Instead, the other man shocked me. “That’s great,” he said, “really, really great.”

We talked to them for an hour about everything but the land. We talked about church, about me and Caroline and how we were high-school sweethearts, about Ireland and Guinness. Both men had brought their families over eight years earlier. They started a construction company, building custom homes and mansions on the shores of Lake Murray.

Then, the taller one wiped his mouth, and pushed his plate away. “Let’s talk about the land, shall we?” he asked.

Here we go. I squeezed Caroline’s leg, and she patted my hand for encouragement.

“We bought that land five years ago with the intention to build a spec home to show off our work to the downtown community.”

“A 5,000 square foot home,” his assistant added.

“The house that had been there burned down the year before, and we paid close to $30,000 for the lot.”

My heart sank. $30,000, five years ago. Five years of the land appreciating in value. We could buy the land, maybe, but we would have to pitch a tent on it for shelter.

“Every time we were about to start building on that land,” he continued, looking at his partner, “David and I would pray about it and we would just get this feeling that that’s not what we were supposed to do.”

Did I just hear that right? They’re Christians, too? I didn’t hear much of what he said after that. Caroline’s hand was gripping my leg.

I snapped back when David said, “To sum it up, we’ve thought about it a lot this week, and we have decided the land is supposed to be for the two of you.”

We were ecstatic. They offered to build a custom home we could afford at a very reasonable rate. We paid $5,000 for the land. Six months later, we moved in. They had added custom molding and hardwood floors, a gourmet kitchen, and a palm tree in our front yard to remind us of Charleston. God, we loved that place.

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On a tree-lined street in a historic Columbia neighborhood, stands a beautiful two-story house. There’s a piano inside, nice furniture, and a bedroom with a walk-in closet filled with Caroline’s shoes and my shirts. On the second story porch, just outside the bedroom, there is a patio table. On the patio table there are two bowls with the smallest bit of strawberry ice cream- long ago melted and now dried- coffee mugs- some of them half full- an ash tray filled with half-smoked cigars, an empty bottle of coke, playing cards, and a wadded up napkin.

There have been many times when I have gone back to that house with the intention of cleaning off that patio table, erasing the last but of my life that was the way life was supposed to be, but for some reason, I am never able to.