You are a hoverer, I said to the twenty-something this morning, aware of his presence just behind and to the left of me while I was kneading biscuit dough.

A what?

A hoverer: whatever I’m doing, there you are, hovering like a helicopter. The other morning you were standing there at the bathroom door talking to me while I was putting on makeup, just like you did when you were little. Hovering.

<Twenty-something steps away a little.>

No, come back, I urged. I don’t mind it. I miss it, mainly.

Last weekend the hoverer found a penny on the floor of the attic in our 1936 home. I am not superstitious, but I pick up pennies. I think it’s more about paying homage to the smallest piece of our currency, the one nobody cares about, and that we talk about doing away with from time to time for its irksome proclivity to add bulk to the change purse. Ben Franklin’s ‘penny saved’ wisdom will mean nothing to future generations. Picking up this particular penny seemed important. Not much escapes the scrutiny of the twenty-something, even forgotten pennies in old attics. We are alike in that way: always surveying the horizon, detail oriented.

Earlier this morning he wondered why it’s so hard for me to post to my blog. Heh. Well, buying a new house is time-consuming, grasshopper. And continuing to work 40 hours weekly whilst doing it. And since the twenty-something’s arrival a few weeks ago I find myself stepping back into some old shoes, if only for a while, planning and preparing meals for a finicky eater, sneaking in a few veggies cloak-and-dagger style. Just like when he was a toddler. He’s perfectly capable of fending for himself and has done that of necessity on this visit when HCB and I are unavailable. But he does not always choose wisely (Taco Bell comes to mind).

There are those impediments to writing, and the fatigue and exhaustion that come from inhaling buckets of dust, bending and stooping to vacuum up cobwebs and ancient bug graveyards, and lifting and schlepping overburdened boxes to and fro, again and again. Early this morning HCB and I agreed: next time we pay somebody to do this.

And now here is the hoverer, standing behind me asking me what I am doing. Trying to blog, I tell him, just like I did when he was in sixth grade. Trying to.

In three days’ time our status has changed from squatters to bona fide homeowners, something we each doubted we’d achieve again, ever. On Thursday we signed all the papers in a nondescript bank conference room, we unmarried two. I observed to the attorney sitting between us how unsexy the whole business of closing seemed to me. I mean, this man and I have just bound ourselves together for the next thirty years on paper. The attorney laughed and said he wasn’t about to touch that one. I felt like we at least needed to spit in our palms and shake hands, or something. But HCB’s eyes twinkling across the table from me spoke volumes, and he did steal a kiss from me as we were leaving the bank lobby.

The twenty-something and I spent the balance of closing day scrubbing our new house to a fare-thee-well. The house has stood empty for a long time, but it’s still dusty after a period of big renovations. Inside it smells like new paint and carpeting, mostly, maybe a bit of carpentry, too. There will be more dust to clear, but the important work is done. On Friday when high winds knocked out the power in our rental, I grabbed Scout-the-Lab and my things in the darkness of early morning and drove to the new house to shower. Living on the grid, so to speak, has its advantages.

Yesterday HCB and the twenty-something did all the heavy lifting, bless them. We did not really see each other much during the course of the day. My job was unearthing and cleaning things in the cottage, making pathways for big furniture to move through tiny rooms, getting said furniture ready to move, keeping Scout as settled and happy as possible in the pandemonium going on around him, and importantly, fixing homemade chicken noodle soup. I made a single trip over to the house to drop some fragile belongings, to hang a shower curtain, and to roll out a rug on top of a new pad. My bum foot still swelled to the size of a watermelon after all that, and today is not much improved.

But my fellas and the ten-foot truck we rented for the day made three circuitous trips from our mountain cottage to the storage unit, thence to the new house and back again, to retrieve and move things according to HCB’s carefully calculated plan. My massive antique hutch has inspired a lifetime supply of hutch jokes and puns. (Twenty-something this morning changed the handle on one of his social apps to ‘Hutchmasta.’)

Our dining table was finally gotten from the furniture restorer’s shop, where it has waited patiently in the darkness for more than two years after big repairs and refinishing; I almost dragged that table to the curb when it broke just after I moved to Vermont—close call. Hanging our heads over plates balanced on our knees to eat supper will soon be a thing of the past. Soon. We are not yet sleeping at the new place, too much still to do, and a new-used washing machine that on Thursday decided to belch out a puddle of water because of a frozen and burst internal organ, kind of a ruptured Kenmore appendix, you might say. We think we can fix it. And we need a fuel delivery for the boiler.

On the way home from the house yesterday I stopped by the storage unit where I found two filthy and exhausted people dealing with the last load of big stuff. It was cold and there was not much light. And there were casualties: mice had moved into the unit some time ago and left some of our belongings unusable, destined for the dump. They also left themselves behind, in various stages of decomposition. I asked what I could do to help. Bring us four strong men, quipped HCB; hot showers and chicken noodle soup a little while later were the perfect salve, with a heavy dose of the twenty-something’s latest Netflix series on the telly.

Our new place has an unbelievable yard for its urban setting, abutting the Walloomsac River. And in spite of that you can walk less than a block for one of the best bagels I’ve had in a long time, and a strong cuppa Joe to go with. The regulars in that clean-scrubbed shop are friendly, and so are the staff. The woman who made me two breakfasts to go Friday morning welcomed me to the neighborhood with a generous smile and said she knew precisely which house was ours. It was still windy as hell outside, the same wind that had earlier taken down the power on our mountain. Here, she said: let me get the door for you. We’ll be seeing much more of you I said, stepping out into the bitter wind.

I can think of no better time than opening this new chapter to formally introduce Handsome Chef Boyfriend. His name is David, henceforth David-the-Chef. Think of it like spitting into your palm and then shaking our hands. Or perhaps finding a lucky penny.