House-owning obsession or dream?

It's only natural wanting to own your own home, everyone can identify with that. Some people spend their whole lives planning and saving for it but it never happens. Or else, it comes too late for them to be able to enjoy it. Some people search for their dream house until it becomes an obsession but that's another story now.  Growing up, our rented house was a bone of contention between my parents and in later years it was a story I felt compelled to write, giving it, simply enough, the title 'The House'. My mother hated paying rent and she took it as a personal affront that my father went off briskly on the first of each month to pay our landlady. She would have happily left 'the old biddy' to stew a few days longer but my father was a very law-abiding, courteous man and wouldn't have dreamed of making her wait for what was, after all, her money. His punctiliousness was the cause of discord between my parents but the way things turned out my father had the last word and my mother cause to thank him for bringing about a happy ending to what gradually became an obsession with her. An unexpected legacy and a howling gale (which blew out the front windows one night), marked the beginning of mother's campaign to get the landlady to sell us the house.  It was to be a long and weary battle. From month to month the old woman changed her mind as well as her asking price. For a brief period negotiations ceased. She was keeping the house for her son, she said, she might even decide to live in it herself.  My mother wasn't having any. 'We have rights too,' she said darkly, and after a brief lapse into her house-owning blues, she would return more vigorously than ever to the fray.. Looking back I think the fight to get the better of the stubborn old woman was what my mother enjoyed the most and the realisation of her house-owning dream only secondary to this. Of course, the beauty of being a writer you can shape your story any way you want, but I wrote my mother's house-owning obsession the way it was. It is only now so many years later that I see all kinds of different aspects to the affair, not least my mother's own stubbornness and intractability.  But that's the way with life, it's only with time and maturity you begin to see the bigger picture.. The House' is one of 18 stories in my collection 'The Mask and Other Stories' and available on Kindle.