Mortar Mayhem

Here’s this week’s reflection. I hope it resonates with you and ask that, if you enjoyed, please comment and share on your social media. Heartfelt thanks for all your support!

Keeping the light on for you,

Carol

“It’s never over till it’s over,” our realtor cautioned as we excitedly embarked on our home purchase. They say you know when you are “home,” and something I cannot explain led me room to room, as if by the hand, at the open house. I connected with this place on a level I could not articulate, falling madly in love. 

I would like to say the entire sale went swimmingly, but it did not. A host of temperaments came along for the ride as we navigated an inspection and too many weeks of price haggling. On the market for at least a year with nary a nibble, we were the sellers’ best hope for a sale. We even walked away at one point having had our fill of insanity. I was heartbroken to think we would not get to experience this lovely setting. But patience was a virtue, and 18 days of silence lowered the asking price by $18,000. 

Our sellers signed papers in advance to avoid us at closing. With our freshly dried signatures the real estate was finally ours. 

An hour later, I came with new keys to savor the reality of our acquisition. Driving up to the house I had noticed, but gave little thought to, some rock fragments and a pickaxe in the grass. Still giddy that the odyssey was presumably over, the voice of our realtor again permeated my consciousness with the reminder: “It’s never over till it’s over.” 

My victory lap through the empty rooms ended in front of a fieldstone fireplace. The soft colors and double-sided views of this imposing structure had won me over at first sight. Circling the architectural gem, I happened upon not one, but two piles of sandy grit on the floor and one on the mantle. My excitement turned to guarded curiosity when, following a line from the floor grit upward, my eyes came to rest on two distinct areas of darker, freshly damp mortar. 

“Wait… what the…..?!” I angrily muttered to myself. It was all starting to make maniacal sense, given the preceding days with our irrational sellers. Two rocks had been deliberately chipped out of the fireplace that morning and replaced with more homogenous stones. With my penchant for detail, I had noticed two  uncharacteristically rectangular, flat, and glossy specimens on former visits and during our final walk-through the evening prior. I had wondered all along why such a stark contrast was mortared among the other rounded, earthy fieldstones in the first place. The absence of disclosures during the sale meant I had yet to find out why.

Once informed of the mortar mystery, the force behind the sigh our realtor let out could have leveled a skyscraper. The next phone call was to our attorney who, in the name of fiscal fortitude, advised us to let this go; that retribution would cost much and yield little, if anything, in return. He did chuckle and tell us this was the first scenario of its kind he had ever dealt with in all his years of practice. 

The final call was to the sellers, specifically to the genteel husband as opposed to his other, not-better, half. Shocked and unaware that his wife had coordinated this last-minute change in décor, he apologized profusely as a relationship fire ignited on their end. As he begged forgiveness and offered to do ANYTHING we wished (except pay for refinishing the floors they damaged while moving out), our request was quite straightforward: never set foot on the property again. 

We were told that the two rocks held dinosaur bones from an archeological dig in their past and they had these keepsakes mortared in place for viewing and safekeeping. They had forgotten about them and — a few hours before the sale — had the original stone mason hurriedly come to exchange the stones, accidentally leaving his pickaxe in the fray.

Sixteen years have passed, and that “new” mortar still refuses to match the original shade. I will admit to initially referring to the two areas as battle scars, but as the color has faded, so too has my anger.  In its place is a chuckle, an eye roll, a shake of the head, and the humor of a most unconventional chapter in an otherwise traditional tale. Despite its “rocky” beginnings, this house has proven to be a solid respite for us in the whirling winds of life, even with a few stray rocks.

---