At 9 am on Friday morning (okay, it was more like 9:10 and we were the last ones there, whatever), The Husband and I sat on one side of a large oak table beside our real estate agent and mortgage broker.  On the other side were the (about-to-be) previous owner of our (about-to-be) house and his agent.  At the head of the table was an attorney I’ll probably never see again, and in front of each chair sat a stack of paperwork to be reviewed by all parties and signed by some of us. Clearly, I was doing that thing where I act like I know exactly what’s going on as the grown-ups talk business and I secretly wonder how soon is too soon to reach into the bowl of Halloween candy on the table.

After an hour and a half of lawyer-speak and check-passing and John Hancock-ing, The Husband and I owned our first home.  And though I’ve experienced a cross-country move, my wedding, and the birth of my niece all since May, this was the first event of the year that brought tears to my eyes.

Being a girl with no shortage of emotional reserves (do not even MENTION the movie Harry and the Hendersons to me unless you’ve brought a box of kleenex and and industrial-size bottle of Afrin), I’ve kept waiting for the waterworks I was sure this year’s life-changing events would bring.  But instead, as each event has arrived, I’ve been gripped by joy and relief instead of tears.  As the skyline of New York faded into the green hills of Atlanta from my plane window, all I could think about was how thankful I was to have smuggled my best friend out of there with me.  When my wedding day arrived, all I could think about before walking down the aisle was how thankful I was to be hangover-free, rain-free, jilt-free, and wedding-planning-free.  And when my niece popped into the world, all I could think about was the healthy baby in my arms, the love that enveloped her, and the fact that I was not responsible for keeping her alive.  Joy…and relief.

Then came the search for a house for The Husband and me, the place where we would arrange furniture and unload wedding gifts and train a dog and, God willing, keep our kids alive.  And when we found the house, we focused on what we would do to improve it.  And it was all well and good and fun and theoretical–then we signed the dotted line and it became real. And taking on an inanimate pile of wood and bricks left a lump in my throat.  What the hell is that?

After a few days of thinking about it, I’ve had some insight into what the hell that is.  There is the pressure that accompanies being the people with whom the buck stops: this isn’t one of the many places I’ve lived before, where I held out my hand to pass a key and receive a security deposit reimbursement upon leaving. The daily upkeep and long-range condition of this house depend on us, not some management company.  We are financially and physically responsible for its well-being.  And if our Christmas decorations suck, that’s our reputation on the line.

Then there is the pressure that comes with buying a house that is too big for just us.  A house with four bedrooms, two of which remain unclaimed by us or guests, two that are screaming (or maybe that’s just The Mom’s voice I hear) for cribs and diapers and baby smell.  Not to mention the other rooms waiting to be populated by pieces of furniture, preferably not found on a curb in Murray Hill or purchased off Craigslist from a guy named Shasta who lives in a twelfth-floor Brooklyn walkup.  Buying this house is either a tempting of fate or, if you’re like me and fate has a personality and starts with a capital G, a huge act of faith.

But I realize that the emotion behind this purchase is not really about its occasional similarity to a pressure cooker.  As I signed the paper that put me on the deed to the house, I glanced over at The Husband and the slightly larger stack of papers to which he was adding his name.  And then at the leather-bound notebook he had brought along that bore the proof of years of work on our behalf.  Back when I was balancing on Cloud Nine and practicing the look of my name next to his and picturing my perfect wedding dress, he was saving and calculating and planning for our future.  He was putting money aside as I struggled to buy gum and worried about my next paycheck.  The home we have today is the fruit of his labor and his belief in our future.  All of which leads me to this: for all the planning and work and worrying I’ve done in my life, not one second of it secured my greatest treasures–they had to be received as gifts.

On Friday night, we opened a bottle of champagne at our Party for Two and sat in front of our fireplace on our camp chairs–the chairs that we took up to a rooftop in Manhattan where he proposed; the chairs that were our only furniture for our last weekend in the city as the rest of our stuff traveled across the country toward our future.  We sat in our home and toasted it, and I breathed a prayer of thanks for a life full of acts of faith taken on my behalf.