After 32 years of marriage, my wife and I bought our first home. We’ve been living in the home for almost a year and I’m still not sure it’s real. I walk around looking at the walls and floors, the rooms with our furniture, the kitchen with our toaster oven and breadbox, and I know it’s here. I mean, yes, it’s real. Of course it is. What I’m having trouble with is the “ours” part. I keep looking over my proverbial shoulder, waiting for the landlord to call, asking to inspect the smoke detectors.
When Jenni and I got married, it was almost assumed that a young newlywed couple should buy a home. That’s what a lot of our family members and friends did. Our circumstances were different in that I had just shipped off to Germany in the Air Force and Jenni joined me a few months later. Finances being what they were, and not knowing what the next few years would bring, we rented the top floor of a house in Kindsbach. It was a beautiful village and we absolutely loved it.
Flash forward to our return to the States and my discharge from active duty. It may not be a surprise that you don’t become wealthy serving in the military as an enlisted member, especially for only four years. From that point forward, we rented apartments and homes. Every place we lived, we walked the neighborhoods ogling homes and dreaming of the day when we could own our own. A few times, as our finances improved, we sought a mortgage. There always seemed to be some reason we couldn’t obtain one. Either we didn’t make enough money, or our credit score was just a few points below what the lender would like — a totally bullshit system if I ever heard one. We always seemed to be on the cusp of qualifying, but never quite achieving the magical numbers the mortgage officers and credit reporting agencies dreamed up. Never mind that we consistently paid more rent each month than the mortgage payments would be. Somehow we were deemed a poor risk.
So we rented. And many times I tried to convince myself that renting was the better choice. After all, we’re not on the hook for plumbing issues. If the roof leaks, it’s the landlord’s problem to fix. And in the buildings where we had a doorman, it was like living in a luxury hotel. I pinched myself a few times in those situations, too.
We’ve lived in some wonderful places as renters. The amazing Bunker Hill Towers in downtown Los Angeles, Central Park South in New York City, an alpaca farm in rural Oregon, beautiful downtown Washington, DC. We’ve lived in a few not-so-wonderful places, too. That cardboard box of an apartment in the San Fernando Valley next to an electrical transfer station comes to mind.
Yet even in the less-than-idyllic abodes, we made good memories. We managed to live our lives and have birthdays and celebrate small things with the kids, like discovering the daily parade of FedEx trucks around the corner. But there was always a landlord or property management company to remind us that our living situation was likely temporary.
I think that’s the crux of why I find it so hard to get used to owning our home now. It’s the absence of temporariness. There’s no one to shock us with an ungodly raise in the rent and make us hit the internet with new home searches. For better or worse, we are here. We’re done. We live here.
I realize there are some people who, despite owning their home, find themselves selling and moving. Maybe it’s a new job, or they get tired of living under the threat of fire, flood, or earthquake. Maybe they want a safer place. Or, they simply feel the urge to seek out a new view from the living room window. Maybe they can make a lot of cash in the currently ridiculous real estate market. Our situation is different. First, we’re a couple in our 50s with two adult children and one soon-to-be adult. We won’t need to find a home with more rooms to house a growing family. We’re not into flipping this home (or any home for that matter — an increasingly disgusting and market-ruining practice). We found a really nice neighborhood. More importantly, I am personally dog-tired of loading and unloading moving trucks. Seriously, I’m done. If I never have to hoist our furniture up a ramp again — or pay someone else to do it — I will be very content.
So we are digging in. Quite literally, in fact, because we finally have a place to create a garden without asking anyone’s permission or worrying that the landscapers will spray Round-Up on the tomatoes or stomp through a newly-seeded patch of zucchini.
It’s far from perfect. There are quite a few repairs to be done on our cozy 1948 Cape Cod. The garage needs replacing, the electrical was total bunk, we’re getting all new pipes, and a few other smaller projects await our attention. In fact, as I write this I can hear work boots stomping up and down the stairs as people work on our upstairs bathroom and basement laundry. It’s a bit of a mess at the moment.
But it’s our mess.
After 32 years, it feels amazing to be in our own home. I wake up every day and I’m still not sure it’s real. That’s my window. Outside the window is my yard and my shed. That’s my driveway and it’s nobody’s business how I park my cars. It took a long time to get here, and it feels as sweet as I imagined it would be when we peeked through living room windows and imagined what it would be like. It will take some getting used to.
If I could go back in time, I would tell myself not to rush buying a home. I would tell myself not to change a thing. Drop the pressure of buying a house to feel like a “real” member of society or fulfilling someone else’s vision of what your life should be like. Dream about it, but don’t try to force it into reality.
We’ve been very fortunate to arrive in this situation where we can finally own a home. I don’t accept it lightly. It still feels weird. But I’ll take it.
Photo by Luke Stackpoole on Unsplash
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