WATFORD CITY, N.D. — Have you ever experienced a moment in your life where, in the middle of it, you’ve heard the voice in your head say, “This is it, this is a memory now”?

I have several I go back to now and again, but the recent quietly falling snow has reminded me of this one — my husband and I sitting together, squished side by side in the big leather chair with the big leather ottoman that we had purchased secondhand from our landlord the year before. We had only been married a couple years, and we moved that big piece of furniture into our very first house with the level of optimism and delusion you only really get when you’re in your early 20s.

And we had it big enough to think that buying a repossessed house that needed to be completely gutted to be livable was a choice that was

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