I’ve been thinking about luck and fortune and fear: elemental thoughts for an elemental time. Dave and I put an offer on a house last week, and that offer was accepted, so provided the inspection goes well we are planning, friends, to buy that house. Shelter, home. More essential elements of life.

As we made the decision to buy this particular house, I realized that I’ve never moved before without being nudged by some sort of necessity: going away to college, getting a job in a new town. There is always some force majeur. When we left Chicago, our bathroom ceiling caved in on the morning of the move, the plaster split like a banana peel. Dirt spilled out all over the floor; we never knew why the ceiling separating our second floor unit from the third floor above was full of soil, but there you go.

Now we’re jumping Tucson neighborhoods for no reason except that the house we want is somewhere else. I love our neighborhood, the barrio viejo, walking distance to downtown, full of brightly colored old buildings. Our new neighborhood has a different, larger mountain hovering nearby and is walking distance to the art house cinema. It will be a change. I am terrified to my bones. These small changes are harder for me than any large leap.

(And yes, I know buying a house is its own large change, so maybe I’m projecting that nerviness onto my 15 minute move, but it doesn’t feel like that. And all I have to go on is my feelings.)

The house, though, is beautiful. The ceilings and floors are both covered in bamboo and the ceiling arcs like a modernist wave. The bathtub is radiates heat, which seems at least as welcoming as the broken Chicago ceiling was distancing. There are chickens in the backyard, and if Paul can handle that, we will keep them. (Though don’t get too excited; there is little chance that Paul can handle that.) It feels like a home, is what I’m saying.

Plus, in an interesting twist of fate, I found out about this house from my dear friend B, who was recently at an artist colony with one half of the couple (a woman, a painter) who renovated the house. It turned out that the house was being listed with my real estate agent. I like this friendly connection. I like this fated feeling.

Anyway, a house. I’m frightened, excited, hungry, tired, jumpy, busy, all these things. I hope I’m ready. I’m getting ready.