Tag Archives: house

At Home in a House?

Posted on by under Uncategorized

back yard

In a couple weeks I’ll turn 43, and I can honestly say that until four months ago, it never occurred to me to want a house. Scouts honor: Until the past autumn, I never remotely considered joining the American “Homeowner” mafia. It’s not that I’ve been stubbornly opposed to the idea, so much as that my lifestyle has never afforded me conditions for seriously considering the possibility.

I spent my young adulthood in a state of perpetual motion, travel, and transit – mostly between states, and occasionally between countries. These experiences were collected in the name of the book I wasn’t and am only sort-of-now writing. These adventures were regularly accompanied by short stints in contemplative communities, during which periods I’d pause, catch my breath, and ponder the possibility of an intentional spiritual or monastic path. While many of my friends and loved ones grew their 401K’s, smartly invested in future “equity,” and touted the good news of duplex-ownership, I fantasized about the conversation that may have occurred between Thomas Merton and the young Dalai Lama. When, at another in the long string of housewarming parties, you would drop “mortgage” and “new countertops” into the conversation, my thoughts drifted to the Alice Munro story I finished before heading to the potluck. Over drinks, you talk about the mold in your basement, dry rot or asbestos in the ceiling, and I’ll nod sympathetically while actually worrying over the lyrics for a song I was working on in my apartment before we met up. sam piano

Maybe it’s that recently the kids’ Legos have become to our two-bedroom apartment what bacteria is in preschool and daycare, accumulating at such an alarming rate that I’d swear these bricks should come packaged with the same rules that applied to Spielberg’s “Gremlins” – particularly that one about not adding water.

Then, too, I suddenly find myself in the company of an 11 year-old, Sam, who recently began requiring “Privacy” in our bathroom. (The humor is not lost on me, as I am afforded exactly 0% privacy in any room comprising our shrinking living space.) Perhaps you, too, would question anew these admittedly creature-comforted, still-privileged circumstances if you watched your six-year-old pound on the bathroom door, followed by his brother shouting he’s “busy,” after which you hear yourself offer the small boy a mason jar. Refusing that option, I recently told Matt, “Well, then you’ll need to wait. Or, there’s the woods? There! Those trees just past the parking lot?”

* * *

yard

It would have been impossible not to see the house. Resting at the bottom of the hill on the curve that leads to our apartment building, it’s actually a wonder the “For Sale” sign is still standing, that no one making the turn this icy winter has clipped it or smashed into it.

And while I initially spotted the sign, I didn’t make anything of it until a week or two later when, while driving the kids home from school, Sam asked if we could look at it.

He just wanted to look at the house, I told myself. It was in walking distance of our apartment building, and looking at a house didn’t mean I had to suddenly unearth the money to buy it. Or did the kids imagine that acquiring a house was a lot like purchasing the newest Avengers Lego set?

The woman who met us that Saturday morning told us it needed work, and she was selling it for her parents and they wanted it off their hands sooner and so some things were negotiable. “Which is still really no matter,” I thought, running the numbers through my head, “because 0 divided or multiplied by 0 is still 0.”

However, I’m puzzling now about what happened the moments after she showed me the faded, dried up remains of the summer’s strawberry and raspberry patches. And then, too, when Sam reached for the sturdiest, lowest hanging branch on the crab apple tree out front. Soon, the kids were running through the large yard out back and I was suddenly watching a story play out in my mind that I’d never until then mildly entertained. Exactly where had this story been hiding, I wanted to know? The one where the kids run laughing through the wide open yard – not a stone’s throw from the garden – and I then drift from my spot by the woodstove, out to the back deck with a beer in hand and cheerily call, “Alright you knuckleheads! C’mon – it’s dinner time!”

At one point, as the kids rolled around the large, empty living room, wrestling and doing somersaults and cartwheels, I looked out the wide, surrounding picture windows – each of them desperately in need of a lot of work – and I saw the room filled for a house concert featuring a friend’s solo act or one of the many local bands regularly staging intimate, unplugged house concerts around Alaska. Around then, deep in the throes of their play, Sam stopped suddenly, shot a glance my direction, and asked, “Can we buy it, Pop?”

I stammered and sighed. The owner’s daughter laughed, told me she had a couple kids of her own and understood, while I grit my teeth and told Sam we’d think about it.

“But I like it! I want that bedroom!” he announced pointing down the hall.

bird houseWe didn’t buy that house. There are a few reasons why. Money is one, of course, but so was the basement, which yanked me out of my fantasizing and only called to mind The Silence of the Lambs.

And I have yet to buy a house, still, though I’m thinking about it with a bit more conscious intention and thought now. I guess, until that Saturday a few months ago, every other house I’ve stepped into seemed only a house shaped collection of rooms. For whatever reason – the berry patches, the woodstove, the three bathrooms, or maybe the kids running with abandon through a yard, I can’t say exactly – one autumn Saturday afternoon, I somehow found myself plumb in the middle of a possibility called home.

bedroom view

Hunting

Posted on by under Home & Place

We were armed, of course—with a very rational checklist, like all house-hunters are.

It looked something like this:

– Four bedrooms (we have three daughters and lots of house guests)

– At least two full bathrooms, including one of the main floor (did I mention three daughters?)

– A spacious kitchen with lots of counter space (Jason and I usually cook together—there’s often a daughter and a dog in the mix, too)

– A dedicated space for me to work (I work from home, which had always meant carving out a cramped corner of the living room)

– Closets! (Closets, closets, closets! Our current house had not a single closet or pantry on the entire first floor—and did I mention three daughters? And backpacks, soccer shin guards, volleyballs, a cello, and more pairs of shoes, boots, and muddy cleats than I could count?)

– A hang-out space of some sort (as our daughters grew into teenagers, we wanted to be sure they regularly invited friends)

– A fireplace (for those cozy, picturesque evenings together as a family)

– A front porch (I have always considered this a must for a house)

– A location in our current neighborhood (walking distance to the girls’ schools, cafes, the library, the farmers’ market, etc.)

Oh, and there was one must-not-have: NO black walnut tree. We’d had enough of the squirrel colony that congregated in the backyard of our current house, and enough of the curses we uttered each time our current tree dropped its ample harvest on our roof, cars, and patio furniture.

In general, we thought our checklist was perfectly reasonable. And we weren’t in a huge hurry to find something—we had already survived two years as a newly-formed family of five in the house I had purchased for three (as a single mom, just months before I met Jason). We were just “keeping our eyes out.”

Each year, for about three years, we went to see a handful of houses. Some met the requirements on our checklist, but were just too expensive. Others had a significant flaw (or two)—a visible bulging in the foundation; a tiny, unworkable living room (but lots of space everywhere else); terrible kitchens (without any hope for feasible remodel plans); a shared driveway or no garage.

There were also a couple of houses that could have worked, but were somehow just “off.” I began to differentiate “house-hunting,” which requires being armed with a list and a realtor, from “home-hunting,” which calls for a fully-loaded gut (and a refusal to buy into the optimism gushing from the realtor’s mouth).

With each visit to a new listing, the hope that buoyed us as the realtor unlocked the front door, quickly deflated. And with each disappointment, we returned to our cozy home determined to find ways to make it work. Trips to IKEA resulted in more storage, and a remodel of the basement added a second bathroom and a fourth bedroom, so two of our girls no longer had to share. After three years of “keeping an eye out” for houses, we simply stopped.

house4saleAnd then, one February day in 2013, I was walking the dog and saw a new For Sale sign. Even from the sidewalk, something about the house spoke to me—to my gut, as cheesy as that sounds.

As it turns out, it was The One—even though it didn’t meet all of the requirements on our ever-so-rational checklist. There were two full bathrooms, but no bathroom of any sort of the first floor (this is apparently a cost of loving 100-year-old houses). There was a beautiful sunroom with built-in bookshelves and three walls of windows, which has become my dream office, but no front porch. The kitchen was workable, but not nearly as spacious as we had hoped for during our house hunting. And there was a wood-burning fireplace, as advertised in the listing, but during the inspection we discovered that it wasn’t a working fireplace and couldn’t actually be fixed to become one, short of completely rebuilding the chimney.

homecomingdinner2013Yes, there are four bedrooms and plenty of beautiful closets, and the location is perfect. Even more importantly, much of what we envisioned for our new home has become a reality—less clutter, more space for family and friends to be together, the ability to host big meals (that first fall we did a Homecoming dinner for our daughter and 22 of her friends and a chili cook-off for 50+). And as a family, we’ve enjoyed two cozy winters of together time, gathered by the fire—the people we bought the house from installed a gas fireplace (not our original ideal, but it sure has made it easy to light a fire every evening rather than just every-so-often).

In short, this is our home and it has been just right from the beginning, regardless what our list said. Even that first summer, when we realized that big tree in the backyard was—you guessed it—a black walnut (this is a danger of buying a house in February and not being an expert in tree bark identification), we had to laugh as we grumbled. After all, we had been home-hunting, not house-hunting.

 

Moving House

Posted on by under Guest, Out of Place

Late last year, I attempted to move into a house not owned by my parents. I sat down with a potential roommate (a friend of a friend) and we established that although we were strangers, neither of us was too strange.

I began to haunt Craig’s List for homes in our price range (which was somewhere between “it has a lot of personality” and sleeping with a gun).

I fell in love with the first house we saw. It was over a hundred years old with beautiful wood floors and a mantelpiece. There was an enclosed porch on the second floor and I could just see my writing desk there with a cup of tea on it, curling steam.

“I want this little yellow house,” I said, after the current renter had left and my not-yet roommate and I were left alone in my car.

“You can’t fall in love with the first place we go,” he said.

But I did.

At my insistence, we drove to the property management company and even began to fill out applications before we realized that the numbers didn’t add up. To qualify to rent this house, we would need another roommate, at least (and it had been hard enough to find each other). Still, I kept hoping.

*   *   *   *

We walked through apartments which looked as though they hadn’t been redone since the seventies (with prices to match). We toured buildings with tiny washing machines, and pools in the complex, and the chance of a garage (if there was a vacancy).

The whole process made me tired, and I kept thinking about that little house.

*   *   *   *

“Apartments are fine,” I said. “But houses just have so much more character, don’t you think?”

We had just realized that we were truly torn over something important. I wanted wood floors, he did not. We were both convinced that the other simply didn’t understand the facts.

“Sure,” he said. “But there’s so much more to take care of in a house.”

He didn’t get it. After years of living in places I couldn’t control, I wanted someplace to care for, some place to love.

“Let’s just see,” I said. “Maybe if we find the right house.”

*   *   *   *

I went to our last showing alone. I didn’t intend to, but my would-be roommate got lost. So, I stood in another little yellow house (apparently I’m strangely drawn to yellow houses) and chatted with the representative of the management company, trying desperately to act like I knew what I was talking about as I asked questions.

StricklandhouseThere are lots of different kinds of little yellow houses. As I think back on it now, with its empty laundry room, draped with blackout curtains and central hood location, this one would have made a good drug house.

This little yellow house, a bit worse for wear, was across the street from the Salvation Army, and two buildings in from Planned Parenthood.

There was a handy bus stop on the corner, and several inexpensive Chinese restaurants close by.

I don’t know if it was the pedestal sink in the bathroom, the bright orange bedroom (with a walk-in closet) or the wood floors, but I found myself asking about the next steps in the application process.

My roommate arrived after the agent had left, and we peeked in the windows. The paint was peeling and chipped, the interior was dark, and the windows were leaking heat faster than it could be generated.

For some reason, we decided to apply to rent it.

*   *   *   *

If warning bells were ringing then, I didn’t hear them.

This was it, we were getting our little yellow house.

We signed the papers and picked up the keys. It was the week of Christmas, and my brother was in town to help me move my belongings from one home to another.

I moved my things, but planned to stay at my parents’ through the holidays.

My roommate moved in with his brand new set of early Christmas Tupperware.

*   *   *   *

I began to unpack, a little each day, setting up my bed, and hanging my clothes in the closet. I thought I was emotional from all of the transition, but as I smoothed my duvet and placed my new set of knives on the counter, I couldn’t shake the lump in my throat. I didn’t open the knife package, I couldn’t bear to put them in the sticky, hand-painted drawer.

I was nervous about going to the house alone at night. I would reach out to my roommate, first, to make sure he was there, or take my brother with me. I would put on a record, and turn on all the lights, hoping I would get used to being on my own.

But something wasn’t right.

It wasn’t long before I started getting texts from my roommate. They were low-key at first. Don’t cook anything. There might be mice. I haven’t seen any.

But things escalated quickly, as they often do.

He called our contact at the management company. She offered to bring mouse traps.

There are mice everywhere.

I called him, after that, and he told me about the nest in the stove, the droppings all over the counters. I thought about the evidence I’d seen in my closet.

Before I knew it, we were on the phone with each other, and then the property managers, trying to break the lease we had signed days earlier.

When it was done, and we were free, my almost-roommate moved back home to another city. I sat amidst the boxes in the room that had always been mine, in my parents’ house, and cried.

 *   *   *   *   *

Strickland“Moving House” was written by Cara Strickland. Cara has lived in San Diego, California, London, England, and Upland, Indiana. Once, in college, she wrote an essay saying that she was from Narnia. She currently lives in Spokane, WA, in a wonderful little house with wood floors and a purple porch, where she is a writer, blogger, editor, and food critic.

 

 

Where I Am: Four Houses, Four Turning Points

Posted on by under Welcome to You Are Here

I live in Urbana, Illinois, a city I didn’t want to move to in the first place. My opinion on the matter was weakly based on the handful of times I had driven by the Champaign-Urbana exit on Interstate 57. From that vantage point it was just another flat, cornfield-edged town with predictable, treeless suburbs and chain restaurants.

But in 2001, when my youngest daughter was still in diapers and I was finally admitting to myself that my marriage was falling apart, it felt like God was urging us to move. More precisely, I thought that moving—and my husband’s new job—would somehow save our marriage.

In the 13 years since moving to Urbana, four houses have been home. I don’t know if it’s by design or coincidence, but it seems that each significant Act in my life here has demanded a new stage, as if the inner transitions couldn’t be complete without the leaving of one tangible place and the arrival at another.

*  *  *  *  *

Our first Urbana house caught my eye because—if you could see beyond the birdhouse and ivy wallpaper—it reminded me of the beloved house we sold in Michigan before moving here. Both were 1920s-era Mission style, with sturdy stucco exteriors, generous wood mouldings inside, and plenty of tall windows paned with thick, wavy, antique glass that creates mottled patterns of light when the sun shines through.

During the three years we lived in that house, our toddler and pre-school-aged daughters were at that kill-you-with-cuteness stage of life, busy choreographing dances, creating elaborate plastic feasts in their play kitchen, and layering on the most unlikely costume combinations.

But in spite of those bright moments, I think of that first house the House of Pain. Yes, I know it’s overly dramatic (and also the name of a nineties hip-hop band), but for me, the house was the scene of much yelling and crying and despair. Ultimately, it was the place where I gave up—not just on marriage, but also on my long-held childhood belief that God had plans to prosper me, not to harm me.

*  *  *  *  *

If I was drawn to my first Urbana house because it reminded me of a house in my past, I was drawn to the second Urbana house for the opposite reason: It was nothing like the House of Pain. It was one-story not two; 1960s not 1920s; brick not stucco; and straight-forward, not “full of charm and character.” Most importantly, I was bound to it only by a 12-month lease, not a mortgage. I signed the lease after my divorce was final—after the House of Pain was sold and our marital collections of books, CDs, artwork, and kitchen appliances had undergone a necessary but unnatural process of division.

This second home can best be described as the House of Rebellion (clearly a perfect name for an angry metal band). Just like music that serves to numb the mind, the House of Rebellion provided an escape hatch from the life my ex-husband and I had shared. It played into my desire to be tied to nothing: not a marriage certificate, a church membership, or a mortgage. I devoted myself to my daughters when they were with me, and on the weekends they weren’t, I did whatever I pleased.

Like many rebellions, however, this one led to rock bottom, not freedom or enlightenment. One day about a year after moving into the rental, I knew it was time to stop feeling sorry for myself and start claiming my place. Maybe if I chose to live here—decided to put down roots on my own, in a house of my own—that whole sob story about “following my husband to save a marriage that couldn’t be saved” would lose its power over me.

*  *  *  *  *

Buying house number three happened amidst a flurry of change: I ended a bad relationship, decided to try church again, went to a new counselor, and generally began figuring out who I really was.

This was my House of Healing (yep, cue the cheesy eighties CCM band). It’s the house where I learned to sit and just be in the moment, and where I learned that God wants me to find myself, not fix myself.

I worked in my garden, pulling out weeds with deep roots and planting perennials, and I invited new friends to sit around my table and share the meals I cooked. My daughters grew in those sunny rooms, writing stories, learning to play my grandmother’s piano, and forging great “wilderness” adventures with friends in our large, tree-filled yard. Along the way, as I mowed, painted, baked, and parented, I recognized this truth: I have more power to shape my place than it has to shape me.

And then I met Jason. We eventually got married, blending our families in that House of Healing, all five of us crowded in, watching and learning in awe (or at least the grownups were in awe) as redemption was worked out in one surprising way after another.

*  *  *  *  *

Finally, last spring, as our three girls (and their groups of friends) grew bigger, Jason and I sold “my” house and bought “our” house: The House of Hope (or Truth)? The House of Second (and Third and Fourth) Chances? The House of New Creations? I’m not quite sure yet, but that’s OK—I don’t feel the need to pin down the life that’s unfolding here or the God who works in so many places, in so many ways.