G’bye, dreams.

Across the street from the CDC is a tiny little building that has captured my imagination for years. It is so little – maybe 12 feet by 18 feet? I have especially come to love it during my Tiny House Phase. (Rich Inner World and all that.)

See it? The little tan one in front of the big white house? It’s pretty tiny, so it’s easy to miss.

Throughout my time in Seward, this little building has been:
* a tiny vacuum/sewing machine repair shop
* a tiny used car lot
* a tiny Russian Orthodox church (they added an ‘onion’ on the top)
* a tiny office headquarters for a siding company
* a tiny empty building – my favorite

I would daydream off and on about what I would do with such a tiny place, because I obviously couldn’t live in it. (Could I? Could I?) My best plan was to paint the entire interior white, put pegs and mirrors all over the walls, set up a small table with beautiful china, hang some fancy hats and shawls on the pegs, and open up a tiny birthday party place for little girls. I had it all planned out – rent would be cheap and I’d provide tea sandwiches and cakes for a modest fee. Or, people could just stop by and pick up the key, and we would all agree that they’d need to clean up afterward. And when it was not being rented, I’d pretend to live there.

Today one little boy was watching the trucks go by out my classroom window, giving me a running report of how many semis he saw, when he asked, “What happened to that building?” I looked out and gave a desolate wail.

The children nearby asked if I was ok, and I told them about my love of that little house and that it made me sad that it had been knocked down.

Tyler gave me a hug.

Then I put on my big-girl panties and went into stupid teacher mode and brightly said, “Well, they can’t leave all that rubble there. What do you think they’ll do with it?” Then as I explained what ‘rubble’ meant and we talked about how the workers might clean it up, I sobbed a little inside.