christina speaks

Storytime

Once upon a time, there lived a young woman who grew up in the Fireworks Capital of America and went to the City of Champions for college. In 2006, she moved with her boyfriend to Washington, DC, where she, a bright-eyed bushy-tailed college graduate, began working at a small nonprofit as a program assistant. Our heroine quickly learned that “program assistant” was code for “do endless mail merges using information from a database still running on Microsoft Access 1997 while your supervisor watches soccer games online all day” and that life in the nation’s capital was not nearly as exciting as The West Wing had made it out to be.

Undeterred, she found a new job and moved to a nicer neighborhood. The job was good. The neighborhood was charming. But she never quite warmed to her new city. She found that many of the people she met enjoyed talking only about how important they were working as interns in obscure House members’ offices, drafting legislation on horse slaughtering or mailing flags to constituents, and weren’t interested in talking to her once they realized they had nothing career-wise to gain from her. The hourlong commute got to her. The one hundred degree temperatures coupled with one hundred percent humidity every single August day wilted her. The studio condominiums selling at over three hundred thousand dollars shocked her. The general “just as soon spit on you as look at you” attitude of her fellow citizens dismayed her.

In short, she was unhappy. And her boyfriend was, too.

So they began looking for ways to get back to the fair city in which they met. They planned and schemed for several months, squirreling away savings, looking for jobs, thinking about the future. Soon, her boyfriend had a job offer in hand and they moved back to Pittsburgh during its most beautiful month: February. Amidst the slush and ice and blackened snow, they settled with their two cats into an apartment where the rent was less than half their rent in DC and they were happy.

Soon after this, they decided to get married. And soon after that, they applied for a mortgage and began seriously looking for a house. Three days ago, they made an offer on a lovely house in Greenfield that seemed as though it was built for them: great backyard, plenty of space, large kitchen, creative vibe. Two days ago, they learned that their offer was accepted. They laughed and hugged and talked about new paint colors for the bedrooms and generally felt very happy but also very strange at the idea of owning a house. Because that is something grown-ups do.

Nevertheless, they will hopefully soon be homeowners and spouses in the city that they love very dearly. Because sometimes dreams do come true. If you know what your dream is and you work very, very hard at achieving it, that is.