Dear Judith Ann-

There exists a snapshot, taken by the realtor, of Russell, Nancy and myself clutching a “SOLD” sign in front of the big victorian edifice we had just purchased in Athens on Hudson. That was in the late Summer of 1997. Our happily grimacing faces would soon appear above the latest Catskill Realty listing with a caption: “Three More Happy Buyers.”

view down to the alley

I may find a copy of this image and will add it to the opening of this letter to you and the essay I plan to write on how our habitations affect us and otherwise.

That Russell thought he and Nancy and I could share even a Summer rental much less buy property together is insane.

So there we were.  The plan was that we would live in the big house, with them coming up mostly weekends from the City, and over time I would “improve” the barn like building on the alley below the big house as time and money would allow.

This arrangement would drive them crazy from the very beginning. They would arrive for the weekend, after two hours on Amtrak, to find me in what Nancy considered “her” living room, sprawled on that big green velvet sofa from my parents’ house, drinking wine, gobbling bonbons, and reading novels in french.  Things boiled over, so to speak, when Nancy’s father paid for an expensive new stove whose functions were controlled and monitored by a computer dashboard behind the burners.  Nancy let it be known that this magical contrivance could only be operated on weekends and even then only by her. Weekdays I would cover the top and front of the stove with some of the cardboard in which it had come and put an electric hotplate atop the now protected stovetop. Only thusly was I able to boil an egg or create an omelet.  Obviously, a leisurely do it yourself project on weekends was out of the question. I would have to renovate the fixer-upper on the alley sooner rather than later.
The urgency of our divorce required a renegotiation of our financial arrangements. So, while we continued to own the property “in common,” Nancy and Russ agreed to assume the mortgage and to reimburse me for my share of the down payment. In return, I would find a builder and pay for the costs of an immediate renovation of a building that had seen use only as a garage and chicken coop. Without water, heat, electricity, insulation or sheet rock, it was a shell. I would be virtually starting from scratch.
But it was winter and the builder I found was busy indoors. He agreed to begin in April.

Every weekend I contrived to be somewhere else rather than smell the emanations from that gorgeous oven and the simmering contents of pots and saucepans on the stove top. Meanwhile, During the week, I worked at the design for my dream carriage house/atelier on the alley and waited for Spring. (More to come.)