Shack in the Back

Motivated Mom and I were out doing "empty nester" spur of the moment stuff today.

We're not really empty nesters yet, but the planetary alignment was favorable to being spontaneus.

In downtown Rehoboth Beach we spotted a home that had escaped our notice before. The one-and-a-half story building sat at the back of a narrow lot and looked to be the perfect size for a pair of fairy tale creatures - maybe two of the seven dwarves.

The white clapboard house had gingerbread trim painted sky blue. The roof slopped so steeply that I could imagine an elf skiing down the incline on a January afternoon.

If I were single, I thought, that would be the perfect home.

Then I remembered a childhood friend who had lived in such a house. He called it The Shack in the Back. Chip and his mother lived on a property with a small A-frame building in the backyard. The A-frame had once served as a studio. When Chip hit sixteen years of age, the studio became his home. He was the envy of every teenager in the area.

Come to think of it, two people could have lived comfortably in that converted studio.

When Motivated Mom really do become empty nesters, maybe the fairy tale home in Rehoboth Beach will be available. How cool would it be to live in a cottage that was half a step distant from the everyday world - a house where daydreams come true.