MY DREAM HOME (Daily Prompt)

Write about your dream home.

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Obviously, everyone has their own definition of their dream home. Does yours include an in-ground pool (oh, yeah, and a lap pool and hot tub!) in a gated community, the landscapers and the house cleaning service visiting at regular intervals, greeted by your butler while you’re being served dinner by your personal chef?

Perhaps instead, your dream home is a cabin in the rustic countryside with “to die for” views. You open the beautifully crafted front door, and find every modern convenience known to man, integrated within a tasteful slight cabin-esque theme.

Often when my wife and I drive through our city, the sheer number of huge, magnificent homes we encounter seem like they would only be available to those with extremely deep pockets, and we become curious if there are that many rich people in town or if there are instead a lot of people in deep debt to appear to have a perfect life. We also jokingly contemplate a third option…lots of drug dealers (thankfully we doubt that’s the case).

To truly define what my dream home would look like, I have to travel back in time to put my ultimate picture into context.

Decades ago, my parents moved our family from southern Missouri to a small town in northern Iowa. Real estate at the time was pretty tight in this small town, so we were initially forced to rent a home for almost a year until the home I consider my childhood home became available and we bought it.

This rental was the ultimate home for a 10–11-year-old. My room had green shag carpeting on the floor that also ran up one of the walls. You know the ugly 70’s green shag carpeting, the kind that goes so well with the fresh avocado/harvest gold appliances in the kitchen? Yeah, that was a dream!

Not only was my room to die for, but the exterior of this house was made of what I would say is concrete blocks. The house was small and had a breezeway entrance that featured on one side a cement bench which was awesome for putting on cleats for sports, untangling yourself from the snowsuit your Mom bought at the Pamida store in town, and also for taking pictures for special events.

Ah, but the part of this house that made it a dream home? I mentioned the concrete blocks earlier but hadn’t noted that they were inlaid with glass in a bizarre yet interesting way. Broken colored bottles (the bottoms of the bottles or shards of the rest of it), bottle tops, costume jewels, license plates, and other assorted somewhat rust-proof junk. Looking on the Assessor’s site this morning, I was surprised to see it’s still there nearly 50 years later…looking as ugly as ever!

If I ever begin a late-stage career as a country singer, I have the ramshackle shack part of my backstory ready to go!

These days, what do I consider a must have in a dream home? I love my fireplace, the big enough but not too big to clean size of our home, the window seat, our huge fenced in back yard, the vaulted great room, the expansive deck, the landscaping, the garden, and more.

What makes this house a dream home however is something immaterial. It’s the love of my family and my amazing Corgi Scamp.

To fully help you appreciate how great this place is, let me show you with a picture.