Sharon Randall: Adventure might come knocking when you least expect it

The knock at the door was not unexpected. I'd been waiting for it all morning, or even in some ways, for years.

What surprised me was not the sound, but the way it stuck in my craw like a big, giant pill I didn't want to swallow. For a moment, I couldn't breathe.

"Help me," I whispered to unseen powers, the memories of loved ones, a lifetime of trial and error, God in heaven and all his angels.

The cat sat at my feet glaring as if to say, "If you think I'm going to open it for you, you're even dumber than I thought."

There are some things we can only do for ourselves. So I took a long breath, squared my shoulders and opened the door to my next big adventure.

I don't know about you, but I get a little tired of adventures.

I don't mean the kind where you go some place you always wanted to go and do things you always dreamed of doing.

To me, that is not an adventure. It's a fantasy.

My adventures tend to take me places I never wanted to go and teach me how to do things I never wanted to learn.

Getting older, for example. That's a really big adventure. Huge. It gets bigger every day.

The real adventure, of course, is life itself. It's like one long "Wild Kingdom" with Marlin Perkins. You wake up each morning wondering what the day will bring. Will you pet a baby elephant? Or will you have to wrestle a Cape buffalo?

Here's a little tip: If you stay alive and pay attention, you'll be amazed at the wonders you will get to see, or occasionally, have to wrestle.

My latest adventure is simple, relatively speaking. I remarried a year ago after seven years as a widow. We spent six months and a small fortune remodeling a house that had been my home for 35 years. Then, just when we were beginning to "settle in," my husband got a new job — in another state — meaning he has to move. And he expects me to move with him.

I know this happens all the time to other people. But it never happened to me — until now. I moved into this house when I was 22 years old. My three children grew up here. Their Barbies and G.I. Joes are stashed away doing God only knows what up in the attic.

I never expected to live anywhere else, let alone, to rent the place out to another family.

But isn't that the thing that always happens next — the very thing we least expected?

Unexpected isn't always bad. Sometimes it's even the best.

The young couple at the door had come to look at the house, along with their daughter, a 4-year-old with long blond curls, wearing pink "jelly" sandals that my daughter at that age would gladly have killed for.

I gave them a quick tour, up the front stairs, down the back — the rooms where my children said their prayers every night; the loft where they launched water bombs; the laundry chute where they dropped the dog; the basketball court where they tried, time and again, to beat their dad at his own game.

It's a good house, a haven; hallowed ground for adventure.

The young couple liked the place, I think, almost as much as their daughter did.

I laughed, watching her walk along the bricks in her pink jellies, like a gymnast on a balance beam, the way my daughter used to do.

It will take weeks to get the place ready to rent. Every closet, every drawer, every nook and cranny is crammed with the remnants, the memories of a lifetime.

I don't know if they're the right family for the house, or if it's at all what they need.

But I know this: The place could use another 4-year-old.

I never expected to say that.

Sharon Randall is the author of "Birdbaths and Paper Cranes." She can be reached at P.O. Box 931, Pacific Grove, CA 93950, or at randallbay@earthlink.net.