While unpacking, I came across a picture I’d drawn a few months ago. A small house.  A garden beside it. Two chairs facing each other, outside under a tree.

I stared at the picture. I’m in that house. 

Around the drawing I’d written phrases. As I read them, I couldn’t believe it.

 People will see my little house and say, ‘It’s so you!’ And it will be.

 There’s room for visitors inside.  They come. From near and far. Old friends and new. The old ones say, “I’ve never seen you this happy.” 

This is my attempt at a garden. It will truly be an “attempt.” 

 I’ll also have an outdoor seating area.  I’ll use it a lot, with my visitors especially, but it will also have a comfy cushioned chair where I write.  

 I had read many times about “visualizing” your future. I had never consciously tried it. The picture in front of me was something I did one day spur-of-the-moment, pulling out my markers and my poster-size post-its (since I can’t write on my walls). I was daydreaming about the tiny house I’d build one day.

As I pondered the images and words before me I noticed that nowhere had I written that I would build this place. And indeed I hadn’t. I had found it on craigslist just one week earlier.

I pulled up to it and tried to keep my feelings in check — I thought it was adorable but didn’t want to get my hopes up before I’d even walked in. But as I walked up to the door to meet the owners, I couldn’t help but hang my mouth open in amazement. I can see myself here. 

The owners took me through the front door and into the living room, and a great sense of calm came over me. This was it.

But you can’t make decisions so quickly, my rational side said. So I told the landlady I’d need to sleep on it.

I called Mom. I told her about the screened in porch and the babbling brook.”You know,” she said, “I only had one dream of your grandmother after she died. In it, she was rushing me through a small house to show me she now had what she’d always wanted: a screened in porch. And I think there was a brook beside it.”

I hung up the phone and called the landlady. It was mine.

I sent pictures to friends. Just as my drawing predicted, many of them said, “This is so you!” In just three days, I’ve had the visitors from near and far that I wrote about. The landlady has a garden just across the brook and said she’d be happy to teach me her gardening secrets. And that comfy chair for writing? It’s on the screened-in porch.

The cabin has, in the past, been used as a vacation rental. The guestbook is filled with people professing their love for it, and for Asheville.

“My mother says a guestbook goes with a house,” I told the landlady, recalling the guestbook my parents inherited with their lakehouse.

“Oh, yes, I agree,” she said, encouraging me to continue it’s use. And I surely will. (Consider this your invitation.)