How we would have managed, and how many times, despite my better instincts, I would have had to descend those step-traps into that toxic basement? And I wonder what life would have been had we bought it. I look into the wooded area behind the house, which the basement opens onto. My dog Max and I walk by that house occasionally. I never learned what was in those rooms, because after the home inspection, we learned that the basement, empty to our eyes, was full of something else. The promises we make that we hope we’ll never have to keep. That house had a finished basement, too, with carpeting, a rickety staircase, and a couple of rooms that I never entered, telling myself that I would have to one day. We had a contract but were able to break it. We had almost bought a horrible house - way too small, but in a coveted neighborhood.
She thought about getting a chain saw once. Going down into our family basement was a literal crawl through the past: old tools, old toys, my Dad’s World War Two vintage army helmet.Īnd a room, which my psyche forbids me to describe here.įortunately for my daughters and me, my wife prevailed, and after touring the upper floor of our potential new home, I ventured into a finished basement, complete with wet bar, carpeting, and a storage/work space where my wife could fasten down her leaf blower, hedge trimmer, and circular saw.
I came from a line of family homes that either had no basement because they were apartment dwellings, or had a basement, only it was unfinished, dirt-bottomed, dark and dank, and home to various creatures of a reptilian and rodent kind. These are words I’ve never found exciting, comforting, or even tempting. When we bought our second house twenty tears ago, my wife, who looked at it first, gushed,
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