My Little Dream House

When you have lived in the house with your mother- in- law for three years you start to dreams of a place of your own. My mother- in- law wasn't the problem, it was the relatives. My mother-in-law was good to me and I loved her. I married into a large family. My husband supported his mother and took care of her. Her oldest daughter and her husband liked to live close, so they bought a new Airstream trailer and moved it into mother's yard. That made too much family so close together. There was no privacy for us. There was always someone coming through the back door. The house was small and we lived in one bedroom. Of course we had use of the rest of the house, but it was too crowded. In our second year of marriage our first baby was born. That made the little house seem smaller. There was never a quiet place for our baby to sleep without someone coming in and waking her up. And then I was pregnant again. This togetherness was getting the best of me. I started looking in the want ads for a house for sale. I found one.That day when it was time for my husband to come home from work I dressed my little girl up in her cutest little dress. I curled her hair and she was so cute. I then made my pregnant self look as pretty as possible and we went for a walk to meet daddy. I had the newspaper with the ad in it in hand. When we got in the car I showed the ad to him and we went to see the little house. The house was perfect for us. It had two bedrooms, one bath, kitchen, pantry and living and dining room combination. We bought the house for $6,500. The down payment was $75.00 which we didn't have to pay because there was a chip on the bath tub. We settled even for that. Furniture was the next problem. We had a table and four chairs, a console radio-record player and a lot of records, a chest of drawers and a baby bed. We went to Montgomery Wards and bought bedroom furniture and appliances for the kitchen. We didn't have cookware, so we bought as few pots and pans as we could get by with. My mother- in- law gave us a roll-away bed for our little girl to sleep on. We didn't buy living room furniture for several months, but that was fine with us, we were on our own. What a relief? One of the greatest purchases that we got was the washing machine. When you have two little ones and pampers had not been invented yet that machine was a blessing. My friend said she could find our house easily because the white flags were always flying. It was good to be home.