My husband Ray and I recently purchased a condo in Florida, fulfilling a long-time dream of mine: becoming a “snowbird” and escaping these cold northern winters. As of March 12, we are the proud owners of a villa in Venice, on the west coast of Florida.
Our big new purchase – our first in real estate in over 30 years – evoked a much wider variety of feelings than just the simple “jumping up and down with joy” that I had anticipated.
First there was surprised disbelief: “Is this really true? Did we finally do it? I can’t believe we finally did it…” I had been dreaming about this for so long that, now that it has finally come to pass, I’m still trying to wrap my head around it.
Then there was mild terror: “Holy cow, what did we just do?Are we out of our minds?” For the first several days, we looked at the numbers on paper, and our elation was tempered with a certain degree of queasiness.
Our friends, Debbie and Frank, who bought a house in Naples, Florida, a few years ago, assured us that all these reactions are quite normal. In fact, we were visiting them in their Florida abode when we received word that we were officially under contract. It felt “karmically” right: We had been visiting them in New Jersey when their offer on their Florida house was accepted. Now we were with them for another real estate transaction, only this time it was Ray and I doing the buying.
We also got to share the experience with my brother Mike and my sister-in-law Sharon, who are also wintering down there. They had just purchased a home in Naples themselves, and closed on it in February. We had, as Sharon joked, joined them in the ranks of the “snow bird land barons.”
But for me, at least, there is an additional bittersweet element to the fulfillment of this dream: Venice is not only an area that we really love, it’s the area where my late parents happily spent the last two decades of their lives.
We were quite familiar with the area from 20 years of visiting Mom and Dad, who lived in Nokomis, the next town over from Venice. Through our visits, we grew to love the area for its beaches, its biking trails, its natural areas, its restaurants, and its shops. We went kayaking in its bays, hiking in its parks, boating on its rivers, and fishing along its Gulf shores.
In January, we looked at homes in a few other areas of Florida before realizing that the answer had been right in front of us all along: Why not just buy in the Venice-Nokomis area? And on our second house-hunting trip in February, that’s what we did. Now we will have a warm place to call home for the winters.
Visiting the area had always felt like “coming home.” But now that feeling is tinged with sadness, because my parents are no longer with us. When they were, every phone call to them began with “When are you coming down here?” And they wholeheartedly supported my desire to buy a place down there. But at that time, we just could not swing it financially. Now that we can, they are not here to see it. That’s very sad to me.
But in a way, it’s good too, because our being here in the very same area will keep their memory alive for me in a unique way. I feel their presence when we walk on Nokomis Beach, or go to a restaurant that had been one of their favorites, or walk down the main avenue of shops in Venice. And of course, I can always go “visit” them in their church’s memorial garden where their ashes are buried. I did that during our February visit; I told them about our villa – then had myself a good cry.
I’m sorry they did not live to see us buy a place down there, for it was almost as much their dream as it was ours. But I have no doubt they are looking down at us from above and smiling. (Although maybe Mom is cringing at some of my more unconventional decorating ideas.)
So there have been a lot of mixed emotions for me. But, I’m still jumping up and down with joy. I will finally be warm in the winter!
And Ray is jumping up and down with joy too, because for the first time in 32 years of marriage, he won’t have to spend months listening to me complain about the cold!
