Over happy hour wine at the Lebanese restaurant, they tell me the first thing to do is change the locks. One of these men I have known for two decades. The other, barely half a year. Astride stools on either side of me at the bar, they hold me in the safe grip of their mirth. One says that he paid an antiquated locksmith neighbor do a crap job he had to replace as soon as the guy divorced and moved off the street. The other tells of nervously checking and re-checking doors during the early weeks. They are eons ahead of me. They have mice in the compost and weeds overtaking their lawns.
Mine is balcony looking west over I-66. Picnic tables, neighbors, noise, light. Plenty of sun for a zinnia. Maybe too much for basil.
My phone is on the bar next to a glass of pinot grigio. Every so often, it pings with another text from the realtor. Someone needs a letter signed. Funds must be wired to an address in Falls Church. We close in on a date.
I hug the old friend goodbye. He is heading back north in a day or two. My new fella and I walk to his car holding hands and bubbling with residual laughter. We pass a building that was not there a year ago. It is now a glinting, black-rimmed fixture on the landscape. Under our feet rumble trains on the orange line. New stairwells shoulder their way up from platforms that had no room for such change. Someone writes over the old blueprints in red pencil. The adaptation becomes a concept and eventually, a given.
Tonight, the to-do list has not kept pace with the fading light. Thunder bowls in dusk’s outermost lane. A strike, a muffled cheer. The second floor of the house where I live with my parents is just a degree shy of stifling. My bed is scattered with the folded remains of a trip to Florida. A suitcase gapes open, its zippers hanging limp and hungry. A heap of clothes is tossing around in the dryer. I wait for them to be finished before I decide. The choices are paralyzing. Some will be put away but some will go back into the suitcase. We just returned yesterday. Tomorrow, one carload goes to the new place. My son’s swimsuit still smells of salt. I shake sand from the perfect coral whorl of a conch shell.
Papers in stacks all around the bedroom floor need staples, folders, labels. I dig up one blank spiral notebook with pockets. It is no match for the task ahead but it will do for tomorrow. I tuck it into a bag with my checkbook and ID.
Now, the wine on my bedside table is cut with sparkling juice. I call it sangria and remember the last day in our Clearwater Beach hotel when I drank a better version while parked at a computer digging copies of old cancelled checks from 2012 accounts and squinting at the lines of a HUD-1 approval. My son was teaching himself to swim outside, arms flailing and neck bent too far above the surface as he huffed and puffed the width of the pool. My mother kept an eye on him so I could take care of landing us a home. Our own home.
Later, as we ate fried shrimp and grouper at Crabby Bill’s, I picked up a red ping on the phone and grinned quietly to myself. A few covert keystrokes sent first word skimming across miles to the man who had asked me to let him know the second I knew. Then, a slug of ice water. I looked at my mother and son over the ship-deck décor, its fish nets and battered wood. “Final approval just came through. We’re closing Thursday.”
Bug considered this news. “What does that mean?”
“It means the bank finally said okay. On Thursday, I’ll sign all the papers and buy the house.”
His face shined open into a huge grin. “Can I stay there with you?”
I laughed. “Of course, Buddy! It’ll be our house. We’ll live there together.”
“When can I see?” He asked.
“Yeah,” echoed my mother. “When can I see?”
“Friday. As soon as I pick Bug up from day camp on Friday, we’ll go straight over.”
As for the first day? That one is mine.
Now, I roll up a blanket, a candle, a coffee mug, a plate. The dryer downstairs is finishing up with a couple of spare towels. The car is stuffed and Home Depot closes in an hour. I need to buy new locks tonight before I go punch the heavy bag with the man who keeps his porch light on for me.
Closing is at 10:00 tomorrow morning. Electricity will be on mid-day. By the time dusk arrives, I’ll be dancing in the lowering western sun behind a door whose keys are in my hands alone.
Category: Home
Rough Cut
We stand at the edge of the playground. A throng of racing children and chattering parents presses us to chain link. He asks about the house and I give him the latest update. Good news, for once. When the celebratory chaos has melted away along with the popsicles, Bug and I will head back to my office to print and sign 44 pages of loan documents. The seller’s bank has approved an extension and my sketchy but efficient new loan officer is pushing for the end of the month. Tee listens and asks polite questions. Neither of us ever bought a home before and I am now tackling this with the help of a huge circle of friends and family which does not include him.
He says that he’s heard about the housing market around the place he is considering. Four-bedroom homes there are going for about what I am paying for this cramped condo. He has dreams of a fixer-upper and his father swooping into town in a van packed with a table saw and hydraulic nail gun to help turn the place into a masterpiece.
S Avenue Crew
I want to say I’ve never done anything like this before. Trying to buy this home is the toughest undertaking of my life. Or, so it seems when I am in the throes of it. After hustling like a horse trader, I managed to get the loan officer to talk to the realtor to talk to the seller’s agent to start all working with me again. After being sure we were just beyond losing, we turned it all around and were just days away from closing.
Then wham. Today, my bank slammed the book shut for the last time. Not (just) because they’re scoundrels who serve The Man but also because central stairs in the condo complex are under repair. Without a property manager forthcoming enough to provide documentation of the extent of the damage, my bank couldn’t approve the loan. It’s sensible. It’s cautious.
It sucks.
So here I am six (SIX!) months into this short sale, thinking to myself, “This is the hardest *&$% thing I’ve ever done. Harder than parenting. Harder than the divorce! I’m not up to the task!” Etc. and all that jazz.
All of that internal chatter? Total B.S.
At 22 years old, about a century ago, I lived in a housing cooperative in Vermont. Just about the time I moved in, the 5-year deadline on the financial support from the local land trust came screaming in at us. We had two dozen residents in two buildings about to be hit with an interest rate hike of several percentage points. We were all living on a shoestring. The cost of home ownership, food, utilities, maintenance, insurance, and every other little thing was shared among a band of bohemians and revolutionaries. Without the gap support from the land trust, that house would have been back on the market and in the hands of yet another city landlord.
Not a chance. We were a posse and this was our block. We went to work. Buckling ourselves in, we powered through days-long meetings with federations and experts, poring over legal documents and funding application guidelines. We dug and dug deeper still to find pockets of money or ideas. We tried allying ourselves with the Canadian co-op associations, the local credit union, members of the Progressive party, Congressman Bernie Sanders. Anything and everything. Giant three-ring binders littered our floors and we flipped through them in twos, threes, until the wee hours.
We went to the state capitol building. We lobbied, we bent and twisted. We re-wrote our bylaws and changed our mission.
And we swaggered home with our suitcase of money.
It required significant adaptation. Our co-op residency requirements had to change to designate a certain percentage of the units as low-income housing. We alienated some of our more off-the-grid members (who am I kidding? That was everyone) by kicking ourselves up to a professionally run property with an application process involving tax documentation and pay stubs. Everyone grumbled. We pushed through agonizing consensus-based meetings to ensure that the whole of the community could live with the concessions.
We saved our home.
Somehow in all of that, we also scored a major grant to make massive structural repairs. New roof, new porch, new beginning.
Maybe the only difference now is that I’m putting all of that grit into a place for my very own self. It is weirdly disorienting. All this effort, not for any identifiable community good but just for my son and dog and me to have a place to shake off? If it’s only for us, can I command the determination? The resources? The support? Gerry Connolly ain’t taking a meeting with yours truly. This is my game now. My block.
And where’s my posse now?
It turns out it is right here. My realtor and I have become thick as thieves in the last six months. As soon as I got the bad word, she was back in the driver’s seat with her foot to the floor and zeroing in on other banks with more flexible standards for collateral soundness. My erstwhile lender has answered half a dozen calls from me today even though she’s not making anything off of me anymore. She just keeps sending on over the documentation and details I will need for working with someone else.
And this is just the beginning.
There’s the firecracker of a guy I’m seeing who’s not only helped me think through every step of this latest kerfuffle but is also just waiting for me to say “go” so he can take his circular saw and hard hat over to the site and get this damned thing fixed.
There’s the assortment of friends strewn from Mexico to Toronto sending me links to housing sites, mortgage brokers, credit unions. They also pile oh encouragement and perspective.
There’s my boss who has given me the freedom to take off on a moment’s notice, as well as all the assembled co-workers who have picked up the slack whenever I’ve disappeared to douse another real estate fire.
There are my folks. Willing to work it, work it, work it in whatever way it has to be worked. Do I need cash? A co-signer? More time? An ear? Granted, they have a dog in this fight. If fish and houseguests start to smell after three days, what happens when you approach three years? In any event, their support is beyond generous.
There are all the new friends in my community who tell me their stories, listen to mine, ferry me around to shop for knock-off furniture, offer to come help paint and move, offer me names and ideas, and just provide the much-needed release from the intensity of it all.
And there’s my son. “Mommy, you can have the $44 in my bank account to help you buy your house.”
This posse is tight and tough. Because of it, I can’t wallow in my dank alley of defeat for more than one hiccup before someone shoves me back out onto street. That suitcase of money is sitting right there in plain sight. “Get on out there, girl! Do what you gotta do. Tell me where you need me, and let’s get to work.”
This fight ain’t over. My little dream has just taken a hit and is coughing in the dust, but we’re all closing in. Minutes ago, a text arrived from the realtor. We’ve got a backup bank willing to overlook a few questionable details and move with utmost haste to close the deal. Now, on to the seller’s gal who is also in this crew, trying to squeeze out a couple of extra weeks. All of us, defending the block. My block.
Consensus and compromise and hustle as we close in on high noon.
This Home Here
Story
In the back seat of the car, my son flips through the pages of Dolphin Tale. Bug fell in love with the story of Winter and her prosthetic tale when the movie premiered. His obsession has reached a fever pitch since I announced we’d be taking him to Clearwater, Florida the day after school ends.
“Do you know who lives there?” I asked.
He thought for a moment.
“Do you want a clue?”
A nod.
“It’s not a person but it is a living thing.”
His eyes widened, a light flashed inside his skin, and he fell over backward on the rug. Lying there with his arms spread wide and his whole face beaming, he cried, “The dolphin!”
Now, he follows the story. From the back, I hear him slowly piecing the words together. “Sawyer was worried that Winter might not make it back.” These are word bubbles popping along a graphic version of the story. And that is my son, reading to himself.
Did you catch that? My son. Reading. To himself.
When I ask what is happening in the book, he does not respond. In the rearview mirror, I watch his gaze dances over the page. He is bent to the work. His focus is absolute.
—
Sport
When I pick him up at Chicken School, Bug is playing Uno with his buddies. “Ready for basketball, kiddo? Or do you want to finish the game?”
He has two cards remaining in his hand and is inches away from victory. Nevertheless, he tosses them onto the discard pile and hops to his feet. “I’m done. Let’s go.” He gives his best friend a pat on the head and tells him he won by forfeit. Then he races out the door.
The red barn has two hoops bolted to the side at two heights. We slip-jog down the hill to the woods to schlep up a trio of lost balls. On the concrete, Bug squats and leaps, sinking one basket after another. Airborne and streaked with sweat, he stands as far back as he can and hurls the ball with all he’s got. Pow. It’s in. Again, again. He walks up close, darts to the side, heads to the edge. Every angle. Low basket, high basket, sometimes just bouncing the ball off the rust-red clapboards to see how close to the pitched roof he can get it.
He does not say “look at me.” He does not even ask me to play, though I do anyway, moving all around him. He barely registers my presence. He races after the ball, brings it back, mutters a sharp “Yes” to no one when he makes a perfect swish.
—
Journey
Once home, Bug says he want to walk the dog with me. I grab her leash and we run run run down the cul-de-sac to the green corridor between houses. Grandma is putting the finishing touches on dinner but we are sure to be late. We bound into the fern-shagged carpet of the woods. Dry leaves up to our shins, mud in the creek.
The dog takes off up the hill and Bug leaps down into the ravine. “Do what I do,” he says. And so I scoot under brambles almost my belly even though going over would be so much easier. One after the other, we scale the eroding creek-bed wall, slip on the exposed vine, cross the creek on the fallen tree, back again, then shimmy down the tumbling rocks. Bug ducks and darts and clambers ahead, whistling back the pooch and making sure I don’t cheat. “You can’t just go over, you have to step on it,” he tells me. I double back and do it right. He sees a frog and shrieks with delight.
Up ahead, the dog grabs a mouthful of something white. She skitters away but we chase her down back towards home. She eyes me warily as I pry the bone from her jaws.
“Can you see what it is?”
“A head,” Bug says.
“Huh. I can see why you think that. But look here. You see that hole going down through the middle? And the wings?” I turn and lift my shirt from behind, bending so he can see my spine.
“Oh! It’s a backbone!”
“A vertebra.” I touch one of mine. “They’d be in a string like this, all down the back. Probably a deer?” Below his blue t-shirt, I press my fingers into his ridged line. “It protects the spinal cord that carries all the messages from the brain to the rest of the body.”
The dog is panting and watching my every move. I return her prize and Bug picks up a walking staff twice his height. He uses it to fly between stumps. He calls it a broom. He chases down an invisible golden snitch.
—
Art
I finish the last verse of “Big Rock Candy Mountain” as Bug finally puts down his legos and crawls over me into the bed. He props himself up against the turquoise fleece cushion and picks up his pen and clipboard. I sing my way through “Baby Beluga.” He has a calculator now. He puts 10 tiny tick marks into 15 small triangles, does a quick calculation and announces, “A hundred fifty people.” He pulls the page off, lets it fall, and starts on the next.
I wend my way through the deep blue sea and Bug make an arc in fine blue ink. A box. Tiny wheels, a platform (which he spells out carefully) and trucks along the edges. His feet press into my side, squirrel under my back, find their cave. His eyes do not leave the page. With the morning sun, another day’s begun, you’ll soon be waking. . .
The song comes to its dozy close. Bug does not register anything different in the world outside of his design. He continues to add tidy, miniscule circles around the edges of the machine. “How does it work?” I ask.
Nothing.
“What are those boxes for?”
A pause. He rubs his nose. “People.” That’s all I get. Pen back on the page. His gaze is steady, tracing the leading edge of the ink.
Immersed, he has no need for conversation. He belongs exactly there inside his unfolding creation. Nested with his mama in a bed that works just fine, he is free to cross into the sanctuary of his imagination. His expression is both zeroed in and a million miles away. He’s found the sweet spot. He’s in the flow.
—
Dwelling
As I watch my little boy inhabit that generative wrinkle between ticks of the clock, I see how we live there together but in complete singularity. I cross that same threshold when dance fills me to soaring, when paper covers rock and its ink hushes the world. I know the place because it is where I walk under stars when my skin slips free and all I ever was and will be is night.
Story. Sport. Journey. Art.
Friend.
Song.
Clan.
We erect these places by the simple act of returning to them again, again, and shoring them up with whatever we dig from our pockets. When we come up empty-handed, we bend and scoop up fistfuls of breath. Of soil. Of our own flesh. Pack them into the cracks. Fortify our belonging.
We sing them open and fix our mezuzah on the door. We map their coordinates upon our names.
Here am I. Here are you.
We dwell in this Here we’ve chosen.
This here.
This, our home.
Welcome to Munchkinland
“If we walk far enough,” says Dorothy, “we shall sometime come to someplace.”
-L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
I had not entertained the possibility of defeat. In the six months since making an offer on the one condo we could make our own, I had only allowed Yes and its ilk to join me on this convoluted voyage. At every twist in the yellow road, I simply closed my eyes for the half-second required to tap heels and picture home. Square shoulders, gather senses, and press on.
Until the letter arrived.
One slim envelope, and not a surprise, turned up in the mail yesterday. “Your application for credit has been denied.” No big deal. I pulled the plug on the quasi-approved loan after it became clear the short sale was going to eat into my finances for another month or three. Two banks on the seller’s end are duking it out over a piddly $3700 discrepancy in the assessed price of the home. Meanwhile, my lender is awaiting word from a county engineer indicating that recent repairs at the complex pass muster. The county engineer, whose name and number I scrounged up in my determination to gain some semblance of control over the situation, takes my call but to no avail. Her hands are tied as she awaits word from the property manager indicating the dispute over rehab costs is resolved. The property manager refuses to say spit because the complex is involved in legal proceedings.
To tip the whole endeavor into emerald absurdity, my bank started charging me $450 every two weeks to extend a loan with no fixed end date. I made the harrowing decision to let it all slide for a month and then reapply. The dream condo is still under contract with me, though, so I trust this is merely a waiting game.
Perhaps my trust has been a fool’s errand.
When I open the letter, an entirely different story tumbles out. My lender has denied my loan not because I failed to extend it but because of a laundry list of credit problems. In the nine months I have been working with this bank – my bank, the one I have used for insurance and checking accounts and credit cards for 15 years – not one of these issues has surfaced. Too many credit inquiries? Too much money in rotating accounts? Insufficient collateral? How is any of this possible, and why has no one mentioned it before?
A breeze from the open window lifts the pages from the bed where I have dropped them. I can’t bear to look at those terse, typed lines. The simple goal of buying a home blurs and retreats. Without this, there is, quite literally, nothing.
Nothing but here.
It’s not as if another place is out there waiting, one that’s just a little less expensive or a tiny bit further from my son. Not a single local condo even at the outer reaches of my price range has been listed in the past three months. The only affordable properties are an hour’s drive away. As the weeks of economic recovery tick by, the asking prices at the low end are ballooning beyond reach.
Let’s not get into a discussion of rental costs. I can actually afford (just barely) a mortgage and condo fees. Stick the extra few hundred per month on top that local landlords demand and I cannot even squeeze Bug and me into a one-bedroom, let alone a place where we can grow.
Mother’s day just passed. I had started to believe those friends that generously reached out to tell me I am a good mom. I can’t help biting back the response: So the f**k what? What does it matter? Sure, I love my kid and give him a decent-enough life. But what to make of this this very basic metric of providing? What to do with this failing grade? I cannot afford a home for my child.
As the breeze scatters pages around my room, every mistake I have ever made pushes up like a twister and tilts the world. That knotted string of poor decisions spills out behind me. At any point, I could have chosen differently, chosen more wisely. Chosen to fight harder for the marriage. Chosen to nourish my own career instead of Tee’s. Chosen to pursue an MBA or a teaching degree instead of my indistinct master’s in nothing remotely marketable. I could have decided to stick with the GIS which came so naturally instead of foregoing it for dance and revolution. I could have studied harder, maintained a professional network, written about something substantial, stopped hiding. Could have stopped pouring energy into worthless shit like gardens, bread, mountains, books, and friends. Cut short the conversations. Culled the flourishing heart.
Gotten to work.
Then, perhaps, I could have the capacity to reach this one simple goal. I might be able to provide for my son.
As it is, I have to live at the front end of this frayed string. I try to braid it into some sort of rope to haul Bug and me up and out of this spinning house and onto a patch of solid ground. It splits in my hands. It shears to nothing.
Paper and sisal. Me, suddenly trapped in a tiny bedroom not even my own. Stunned into paralysis. Now how to proceed? The choices I make today, are they similarly foolish? I can’t begin to understand how my credit is rated poor. Aside from a car I paid off in 2006, I have never held one penny of debt. I pay my cards in full each month. I have no college loans, no collections agencies after me. Somehow, I manage to maintain small but steadily growing balances in retirement, 529, and brokerage accounts. Ample funds to cover expenses both planned and otherwise are a click away every month. In fact, my checking now has more cash in it than I’ve ever seen in my life, squirreled away there to cover 20% down on a vanishing dream.
My credit is poor, quite simply, because I am.
A good-enough job for the Commonwealth of Virginia is barely sufficient for a single woman to survive. It falls short of thriving, and barely enters the ballpark of getting by when a kid is added to the equation.
Yet, I had I assumed my choices are the right ones for right now. The daily mile to and from the metro saves me $5. Taking breakfast and lunch saves me $10 or more. My hair looks like a factory-floor mop squeezed a few too many times through the rollers because I refuse to put money where the payoff isn’t evident. I hold onto a low-paying job with good benefits and flexible hours so that I can pick up my child at the end of the day and still have time for a conversation with him over dinner. We spend our weekends wandering the woods or roaming the neighborhood, eschewing outings that require a fee. All the small sacrifices, the little denials of indulgence, the hand-kneading of the pizza crust from sourdough starter and hand-making of Christmas gifts, because I believed that simplicity could lead Bug and me to the place we belong.
But what if I’ve been wrong?
What if it is cowardice or stupidity keeping me quiet in my room at night writing poetry? What if contra dancing and nighttime walks are just time – precious, would-be productive hours – tossed in the garbage? What if I have only been avoiding the hard work of launching a real career? A girl’s got to pay the bills. This isn’t a game anymore. I don’t get to make decisions based on what feels good or what compels that tenuous aspect called “spirit” (something, as it so happens, I don’t even believe exists) to roam those lush meadows of the imagination.
And now I wonder what it would take. Which missing part drives me to Oz to tap the source? I fear I lack in every regard. My loose, anemic heart has not loved self or son enough to get past my idle ways. My brain has languished in a vacuous, quasi-childhood of pleasure instead of erecting bridges with industry and precision. And my courage? Never has it been emptier than when I have tried to draw upon it as I lurch towards the lip of necessary change.
Without doggedly pursuing these attributes, why would I expect to find my way anywhere more substantial than Munchkinland? How could I have been so silly as to think I could tap my heels and carry us home?
Hello Here
On the brink of leaving this home for the next (inshallah), and I still don’t know what I’m after. Place? Family? Community? Safety? The list is long and it changes with the breeze.
Ambiguous purpose calls for simple acts. I turn to my son and say, “Let’s go outside.”
These days, he joins me. This is new. It used to be a struggle, cajoling and begging before demanding or giving up. Now, he pounds down the stairs, “I’ll put her leash on! Here, let me!” He throws open the sliding glass door and calls her with his quasi wolf-whistles. She is suspicious of his intentions but ducks inside, unable to resist the word “walk.”
Flexi-leash in hand, Bug races down the driveway dragging the dog. She tosses a few desperate glances back at me but I’m no help to her now. Bug has finally learned to slow long enough to let her have a break for her bladder. It rarely lasts past the last drop so she forgoes all olfactory temptations gets down to business. They lope down the swath of grass between the fences. At the bottom where the year’s accumulated leaves lay in drifts, Bug snaps off her leash and she tears off into the trees. He squeals in delight and tramps after her, knee-deep in brambles.
The dog is the leader but doesn’t know it. Winding and snoofling through brown tangles, she takes us on a looping journey up and back down the hillside. Scattered clumps of daffodils poke their way up into patches of sun and purplish flowers unfurl from buried brush. Light threads its way down through dry spindles scratching the sky. I carry a plastic shopping bag and collect the crumpled cans and muck-filled Corona bottles that peek up through the leaves.
I follow Bug. Bug follows the dog. The dog follows her nose. We come upon a creek snaking out from under a neighbor’s chicken wire fence. Across the way is a clutch of bamboo as high as a rooftop. It bends against the breeze. The road beyond is near enough to keep me vigilant. Bug fords the brook with a single leap and slips up the muddy bank beyond. He picks his way through the deep green flutes, swishing them low. Feathered leaves stroke the water’s golden skin.
“I’m in the bamboo jungle! There is a tornado coming! Get out of the storm, Mommy!” I duck across and hide with him in the cool dark there. Cars roar just feet from our back and I holler the dog back from the roadside. She bounds into the creek, splashing us with wet silt.
When it is time to go, we gather leash and garbage and assorted leafy treasures. I urge. Bug dawdles. The dog drips. Eventually we shimmy into a dry creek-bed and follow the tracks of raccoons and deer back to the trail into our neighborhood. Just as we start up the hill, we turn and see a strange sight. In all our years of walking here, we have never come across such a thing.
A boy.
He is making his jerky way over the buried roots up to a log that bridges the dry trench. His black hair and pale skin trace a ghostly curve over the hillside. He looks up and sees us. I wave. He pauses then waves back. Bug and dog and I are poised on the forest edge ready to go home.
“One second, Mom,” Bug says. And he is off. He plows straight through the weeds and pricker bushes and heads straight uphill. The boy leaps off the log, starts to climb, and then slows. Bug is talking to him. He turns and responds. In a blink, they are deep into it. By the time I have gotten the dog turned and have approached the pair, they are discussing the bamboo forest and the forts up on hilltop that some older kids built years ago. “We come in here all the time,” the boy says.
“So do I!” Bug cries.
They talk pets. Neighbors. Teachers. Movies. Books. The boy is into the Warriors series and Bug is reading JK Rowling. I hang back and marvel at their ease. They compare notes on the best scenes from the last Harry Potter movie. Bug seeks and seeks a common footing. The boy, a few years older, is happy to oblige. They giggle about an explosion at a quidditch match then giggle some more when the dog grunts and tries to lick the boy’s hand off.
The sun is sinking and it is past time for dinner. Bug manages to tear himself away. We plod back up the swath of grass. Bug watches the boy return to his own porch and join a group of children there. A grown man sees us and waves a big Hullo. I return the greeting.
“We come in here all the time,” the boy had said. We had never seen him, yet here he was. We have paid attention to this place for years without looking for anything. The dog’s nose has been a truer guide than our own intention. Only in today’s purposeless looking do we stumble upon what we didn’t know we’d been after: a person who shares our place and a similar way of wandering through it.
My son’s bold delight stuns me. Even with no idea what he will find, he bridges the distance to meet what glances against his sense of wonder. Call it innocence. Call it courage. Whatever it is, in our new home (inshallah), may that wide-open not-looking to guide us to what we seek.
Ready, Go, Set
The paperwork is not hard. Neither is combing through the matted threads of text filling 72 pages of contract. The paying is not hard, though willing the fingers to let go of the cash takes a little prompting. The saving is not hard. That is simply a daily commitment to a higher degree of deprivation, and in any event, not doing is always easier than becoming or achieving. The moving itself isn’t even hard. It’s just sort, pack, schlep, unpack, sort.
This is the secret that mountain climbers keep. Those who don’t hike marvel at the fortitude required to summit Pike’s Peak. Of course it takes strength, training, and determination. But it is not hard. In fact, it is the simplest thing in the world. Zen simple. You go forward. You go up. You put one foot down and then lift the other.
The steps are not the challenge.
The decisions? Now those are hard.
To scale that peak on that date, to re-organize commitments, to gear up and pack right and make time every day to train, these choices require a trickier sort of grit. Every assessment is complex. Someone always throws a monkey wrench in the plan. The weather forecast looks grim or an Achilles is torn or a hiking partner starts to hem and haw. It’s time to calculate risks and weigh options. To re-draw the map.
It’s the decisions that take grit.
This week, a co-worker mentioned that she and her husband are looking to buy a home for the first time. “We’re still shoe-shopping,” she said. “It’s kind of fun.” The beginning is just browsing. Try it on, imagine life in those four walls, stash the picture, let go. Then the just-looking begins to draw ever tightening circles around the realm of the possible. The window shopper returns to this place or that and walks the neighborhood. A call goes in to the agent, “Just to get a little more info.”
Now things get serious. The would-be buyer is suddenly You.
Cue the decisions.
How much can you afford? Between commute, schools, size, price, amenities, noise, layout, storage, neighbors, construction, and condition, what are your priorities? What is the relative value of feature, and what combinations are acceptable? Does dream trump reality or the other way around?
You see a place you really like but low ceilings or high taxes give you pause. Do you make the offer? Do you sign the dotted line? You take a few days to cogitate. Now it’s under contract with someone else. You missed your chance. You keep looking.
The pace picks up. The decisions get harder.
Are you really ready to buy? What’s the right thing for now and for the maybe-future? You see another place. Walking through the door makes you swoon. It’s more money for less space in the right place, or less money for more space in the wrong place. The agent takes your offer and your check for earnest money. Waiting, still looking elsewhere. Counter offer. Higher, no contingencies, three days to decide.
Hold or fold?
If you’re in, brace yourself. The inspection, negotiations, loan application, and HOA documents fly at you like a freak hailstorm, bam bam bam. Every time you turn around, a decision blindsides you. People you’ve never met call you up and demand your life savings. The clock won’t wait and the storm won’t relent. In a process like this in a market like this, people who need quiet time to think are out of luck. Adapt or die.
Lisa Sturtevant stopped me in the hall at work the other day. Chatting about my condo search, she said, “This area is weird. Nowhere else in the country is experiencing a feeding frenzy like this.” The inventory at the more affordable end is at a record low while demand is at a record high. This sends prices to the top of Mt. McKinley and shrinks time frames to barely a blink. As a part of the Center for Regional Analysis, she knows her stuff. A few of Lisa’s articles on the DC area housing market are here and here.
Home buying in the greater Washington region means making momentous decisions very quickly with little information against cutthroat competition. Forget climbing Mt. Shasta. This is landing behind the wheel of an F1 McLaren on the final lap of the Grand Prix the day after you’ve gotten your license.
All those mountains don’t prepare you for this kind of hard. It’s everything at stake and right now. Think fast and keep those reflexes honed to a fine point.
Terrifying? Absolutely. Too much? Probably.
But, oh, my. The rush!
In Action
Chaotic action is preferable to orderly inaction.
– Will Rogers
After two hours on the phone with a loan officer, I’m in. Approval! At long last, the gods have given the nod which has always eluded me. It was not just sleight of hand and self-deception. Those blackened pennies dropped into the jar have turned into something tangible after all. The cash is tight but it is sufficient. For the purposes of this one stunning undertaking, we have enough.
How princely of them, yes? To allow me to pay them more money in interest alone than I’ve ever seen in my life? Still, a loan of this sort is no small favor.
Thirty days. That’s it. With fingers crossed and a calendar packed tighter than an orange line train at rush hour, we’ve scheduled the closing for April 3. In the meantime, everything and more clamor for attention. The inspection is scheduled for Thursday when the region is on track to be trapped under 10 inches of snow. The appraisal follows on its heels and then the condo association hauls out HOA documents. That tome will land in my hands right when I’m boarding a plane for Florida for a three day student affairs conference. I’ll have exactly 72 hours to comb through meeting minutes, addenda, and financial statements before I’m locked in for good.
Did I mention that I am also a single mom with a job, a dog, and a rising tide of laundry in the hallway? And that I scared out of my mind? This is a staggering chunk of change to buy a home that looks nothing like I ever imagined settling me into a life that I never planned.
Time expands to fill the need, I hear. And the press of those needs keeps the terror at bay. The roadside rest area where Bug and I stopped to catch our breath was only just that. We cleared our heads. We refilled the tank. We established a manageable routine. It’s been comfortable. Orderly. Safe.
Idling in neutral is certainly exactly those things. Unsustainable too. Not to mention dull as dirt.
So now, action. And all the dangers of putting this beast into gear and edging our way back onto the open road.
Off we go!
Home Run
Seventy-five days of radio silence. Not a word. Nada.
My realtor and I spoke exactly once during that time. Right around the New Year, I started to panic. “Is there anything I should be doing?”
“Nothing at all. The bank has the documents.” She paused. “There are no guarantees here. We won’t stop looking at other properties. You should your eyes open.”
Short sales are an exercise in forbearance. Trust, too. Both have been running thin. How long can the mind and muscles wait at the starting line in a state of perpetual readiness, stretching and gulping air? Every day, inventory in my price range shrinks. Every day, prices in the area go up. The market sizzles and the bank is silent. Where’s that starting gun? Is it minutes? Hours? Or did the race move over to some other track without me realizing it?
As for my realtor’s advice to keep my eyes open (as if they could be any other way), no properties popping up in MLS over the past two and a half months have come close to the fit of the one I chose. The one that chose me. What if one had? It’s a high-stakes gamble. Moving on another place would mean pulling the plug on this one.
My place. The one that is a bit too much and a bit too little but still exactly right for Bug and me. The day before Thanksgiving, the offer came together. Here is the story.
Seventy-five days later, the counter-offer landed.
Bang!
We are off and running! The bank’s new plan is palatable to me. They upped the overall price of the place in exchange for a ridiculously expensive special assessment I can’t afford ($6900! For staircases!) A few other tweaks and details accompanied the counter. My realtor has my okay. She sent the acceptance back over this morning.
Next, inspection. Appraisal. HOA documents. Shifting money. Any bump could send us tumbling. Nothing is certain, except this: we’re covering ground. A home is on the horizon. We haven’t closed yet but we are closing in.
Happy 100 Days: 22
Inside the gray morning, a storm churns. No one looking down from a weather balloon would ever know. Calm skies lay a low blanket of mist over this patch of concrete. Upstairs, my boy dreams on. He will wake on his own and climb into my arms so I can carry him down to our waking day. For this singular pleasure, I continue to press my weight against the porch step. I jump skyward straight up from a squat 20 times over, roaring past my own screaming heart then begin again once the stars dim.
Inside the neighbors’ homes, small thunderclaps fall on deaf ears. Who would know? Secrets, stillness, fury, love. White lights twine around poplars and oaks dotting the unfenced green. In the low dawn, other women walk their dogs at a racer’s clip or jog in nylon sheaths. I wonder who these people are. Even the ones whose names I have learned over wine and block-party gossip are exotic, sleek-billed things. They married the ones who became captains and commanders. Very few of wives themselves hold such sway. They feather their nests and pine for more yet seem to possess a knowledge that eludes me. Gloss and curl, breast and fawn. Perhaps just dumb luck? Whatever the code, I have not cracked it yet. I rely on pulse and sweat. I bend and crunch my belly, powering the core which sustains me. It is, after all, the only one I’ve got.
Next door, the couple stands bickering over the placement of a red bow on the new porch light. She wears the teal track suit, he the familiar scowl. The stout pillars of their new portico twinkles with lights. Their long-legged girls soar past on in-line skates, hair swaying. The silent distance of proximity has me hungering and recoiling. What quiet thunder brews there? Any? None? They have lived here since the girls were toddlers. I have never seen the inside of their home, yet I long to inhabit it, whether it be the shelter or the storm.
I lunge 50 times on my patch of damp concrete. I get to 51 and keep going. Past 75, past 100. These thighs will never fail me. I will climb the stairs. I will scale these walls. I will leap over rooftops, up past the front that taunts us with its constant pressure and threats of deluge. Up into clear skies this surging heart will carry my boy and me, winging us into the place we are meant to be.
Shannon E. Williams 