That night, Running Man (RM) and I started to pack up our things at Edbin's apartment, anticipating our impending departure. The next morning, we headed down to Goce. I had an appointment with Fate.
Zvonka, Mr. M. and his wife were there when we arrived. As we greeted one another, I noticed that we were all wearing big, almost stupid, smiles on our faces. Mr. M. seemed thrilled to be selling the place and, frankly, happy he was selling it to me. RM had told him about my dream and he seemed glad that he was somehow playing a part in it. Mrs. M. looked the happiest of all. When I commented on this later, RM snickered that she probably already had the money spent. Zvonka's smile expressed her delight in being the one who delivered this little piece of paradise to me. We had spent a lot of time together and despite the language barrier, we'd learned much about each other. She had treated me well and I was very grateful to her.
Zvonka had arranged multiple copies of the final papers on the kitchen table. She walked through the documents paragraph by paragraph with RM translating. Part of the closing process was the witnessing by all parties of the electric and water meter readings and a final walk-through of the property. I had few questions at this stage of the game, so I just kept initialing and signing as instructed by Zvonka via RM. The phrase "signing my life away" popped into my brain more than once. While that saying was accurate in some ways, I preferred to view this experience not as signing away my life but as signing up for a new one. A much better one.
During the meter-examination phase, Mrs. M. and I made small talk. I told her about seeing a couple of small scorpions in the wine cellar. She grimaced and told me that they often came inside when it rained.
"Into the cellar?" I asked.
"And in the house," she replied with a shiver.
"Yikes!" I thought, making a mental note to research the toxicity of a Slovenian scorpion sting.
We were standing under the grape arbor in the courtyard. It was heavy with juicy red grapes. I plucked one from above my head and popped it into my mouth, closing my eyes as I chewed slowly. I savored the flavor of it. It was, after all, my grape. Well, almost.
We all walked back into the house where one more signature line awaited for Mr. M. and me -- the proverbial "bottom line." He signed one copy as I signed the other, then we grinned at each other as we swapped copies to sign them. I might have been holding my breath as I signed because I was suddenly aware of the extreme exhalation of air coming from deep inside of me as I put the pen down on the table. Everyone was still smiling. Mr. M. then pulled the keys from his pocket and in an exaggerated gesture, swiped them through the air and handed them to me.
"Hvala lepa, hvala lepa," I repeated, shaking his hand with vigor. "Thank you very much."
Never without a camera, RM wanted to document the momentous occasion so we re-enacted the key exchange in front of my new home.
I now owned a house in a foreign country where I couldn't speak the language and knew just a handful of people, only half of whom could speak English. Missouri was very, very far away. Rather than be overwhelmed by the enormity of the life-altering decision I had just consummated, I did what any red-blooded American girl would do. I went shopping.
Topping the list were cleaning supplies, the European version of a shop-vac and a new toilet seat. There was nothing wrong with the toilet so it would stay, but the seat would be new. I've spent much of my adult life renting apartments and houses and the first thing I've always done is buy a new toilet seat. I guess it's like marking my territory in a sanitary kind of way.
Also on my list were pillows, bed linens and towels, and a couple of electric heaters. It was October, after all, and the nights were getting chilly. The only heat in the house would come from the wood stove in the little dining area. There was some wood in the barn and the stove had been used fairly recently, so I hoped I wouldn't have a flue fire or anything catastrophic. Finally, of course, I had to get a coffeemaker and beans because my morning coffee is a necessity. There was an old electric grinder in the cabinet that still worked, although it was tough to find an electric coffeemaker that didn't cost an arm and a leg. RM called it "American coffee" which I guess is to distinguish it from the strong and thick Turkish coffee most people made here. The apartment in Lokve had a coffee carafe but no coffee maker, so I'd been placing a paper towel in a metal sieve placed on top of the carafe, adding ground coffee and pouring boiling water through it slowly. My method worked, but my new home would have at least one modern convenience.
We shopped in Slovenia and Italy, making a trip to the massive Ikea outside of Gorizia. I'd never been to an Ikea before so it was yet another first for me. But you can't be an American and not experience a sense of familiarity in any huge warehouse-type of store. I was confident that my first trip there would not be my last.
Our final stop was at the little grocery store in Vipava. There would be no more eating out for awhile so we bought enough staples for a week or so, including boxed milk and a dozen small sausages I couldn't even pronounce.
We deposited the groceries in the kitchen and the rest of our shopping spoils in the middle room in Goce. We also brought in some of the items RM had in his car, including the grilling equipment and supplies he kept in a large handled bag. It was convenient for grilling along the Soca River. Now, we would put it to work in the courtyard until I had time to wash all of the dishes and clean the stove.
We spent our last night in Lokve and the next morning, filled RM's car with luggage and wound our way down to the Vipava Valley then up to Goce. I was dressed for a day of intense cleaning. I couldn't wait to start throwing things away then scrub everything from top to bottom, inside and out. I needed to know that when I found dirt somewhere, it was my dirt and not someone else's. As particular as I am about that kind of thing, RM is, perhaps, even more so. He dove into our first day of cleaning with a vengeance. I walked into the bathroom once to ask if I could use it and found that he'd removed the large plastic and mirrored medicine chest from the wall and had it immersed in a tubful of bleach, water and suds. By the end of Day 1, we'd depleted two gallons of bleach but had finished cleaning only the bathroom, entry and kitchen. Despite the fact that this was basically a three-room house, we had a lot of territory still to cover.
I couldn't sleep that night and it wasn't just because of the air mattress. The wind had picked up outside and I was awake, listening to the unfamiliar sounds of my new, very old house. I think that every house has its own unique rhythm. In the quiet of the night, the house was speaking to me, telling me about itself with every hum, shuffle, bump, whisper and groan. I listened in silence, familiarizing myself with each nuance and understanding that soon, I would know this place well and its hearbeat would start to lull me to sleep at night rather than keep me from it. We would become good friends, comfortable with one another, respectful of each other and content to grow old together.
As I started to drift off to sleep, I hoped the same would hold true for RM and me.
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