Fear

I live in a teensy weensy house. H-band says I exaggerate its teensy-weesiness. Our friends say it's really cozy. I like how, when the sun begins to set, it lights the living room in burnt yellow.

We moved in over Memorial Day weekend in 2004. It seemed like a nice "in-between" place for us, a place where we could test our growing relationship, when H-band was B-friend, and midway into a grad school program. I was working in the city and picked up the bus every day just a few yards from our front door. It was one of the best commutes I'd ever had.

The house had a very affordable rent, almost too affordable. We later learned that the owner was trying to sell the place and kept the rent low to keep people there. For me, that meant saving almost $1,000 a month, compared to what I was paying in the city. That $1,000 became more meaningful when I quit my job to freelance and explore the blogging world. I didn't have gigs lined up, just a book proposal and a desire to learn what was next without knowing what it would look like. The house gave me the luxury of living in uncertainty.

When I quit my other work to make BlogHer a full-time business, our little, rented house made an irregular paycheck possible. We were able to take risks because we weren't tied down to a mortgage. We had a scare when the landlord sold the house, but the new owners let us stay without raising our rent. I was relieved and annoyed at the same time. In my mind I'd set a two-year clock and thought we'd move out when then-B-friend had finished grad school. He was now starting a job, and I was now working from home. The house seemed to be getting smaller.

I noticed things. The unrenovated kitchen didn't have enough counterspace. B-friend and I had to make room by placing a cutting board across the sink. There was no dishwasher, which made for some arguments over opposed philosophies on how long dirty dishes should sit. In the colder months, ants invaded. Some of the braver ones would run across my computer screen or up my pants leg, making me smack myself continually, paranoid that more were close. In the long summer, mosquitoes somehow made it past the cracks between the adjustable screens and the uneven window frames and tortured us in the middle of the night. By the time I came to and heard the buzzing in my ear, our visitors usually had feasted two or three times. Despite the summer heat I'd mummify myself in sheets to prevent more bites and wake up wet with sweat.

"I can't keep doing this," I said, every summer.

"Don't worry, Babe." B-friend said. "We won't be here much longer."

To stay sane I'd walk one block to the local main street on hot summer nights and get ice cream or gelato.

"You won't be so close when we move up into the hills," B-friend said to me, looking eastward, where we took most of our walks, both because the hills provided some challenge and because our thoughts of the future gravitated upward, where the real estate became grander, and more elusive.

Our dining room was too small for our scratched, second-hand dining set to be placed in the middle of it. We'd pushed the table against the wall and set only two chairs at one of the corners. That was all the space B-friend and I needed. That was all the space B-friend needed to propose.

After we married, we fantasized about moving out, getting more closet space, and real furniture to dignify the plates and flatware we'd received by the boxful. We didn't feel right about unpacking it all, thinking that it was just a matter of months before we'd have to pack it all back in again. Every week we looked at patterns, browsed Pottery Barn catalogues for dining sets, found things for "the house," not the one we were currently living in.

We'd heard the economy may become unstable, so we kept our plan, but stopped looking at houses--it was just too painful to look inside a home and not be able to make an offer. We looked only enough to know where we'd look, when the time was right. We figured it would just be another few months.

My company received a round of funding, and we hired staff and moved into an office space on the Peninsula. Though I had been "unofficially" making the drive to Redwood City a few times a week, having official headquarters there now made our home's location problematic.

"If we don't buy right away," I said to H-band, "We'll need to figure something out. Get a place in the city, maybe." H-band placated me as much as he could.

"What's the point of renting a place in the city when we will buy a place soon enough?"

To keep me engaged he indulged me in cleaning out the storage room under the house and the garage--things you do to prepare for moving. We bought travel guides to South America and planned a trip for sometime later in the year, to get away. I ended up squelching the plans when a number of business trips to Europe made planning another trip at that time seem frivolous, and when, driving from a cousin's wedding a few weeks ago, we'd heard some news that made all this speculation about the economy feel a bit realer.

A few people were laid off at H-band's company, and then a few more. This raised some hackles, as I--a dot-com refugee--remember how that started, with just a few, then a few more. H-band began to watch more shows on CNN and MSNBC.

"They don't talk about the same things anymore," H-band said. "They talk about changing the way we live."

"We've been saving," I said.

"We could save more."

Finishing up dinner with friends last night, one of them said, "Well that's my night out for the week." It occurred to me that, some time ago, I stopped counting my nights out for dinner. While I couldn't buy a house, I had become quite accustomed of buying anything else I needed, when I needed it.

Driving home from dinner, H-band said, "We need to think of ways to cut back, before we have to."

"But we have been cutting back. For years we've been cutting back." Or more accurately, not running up credit.

"But all those people who haven't now will, and that's going to make it tough for everybody."

I thought of my few consumer obsessions--wine, spa treatments, travel, and clothes.

"I never noticed that TJ Maxx," I said as we passed it on I-80 through the City. "Is that one new?"

This morning I went to yoga class--the first time in three years. I felt stiff and tight, despite being one of the youngest people in the room. The past few years my body has contracted, possibly from being hunched over computers, or crammed in Economy Plus. I got home and expected H-band to be ready to leave on one of his Epic bike rides. The house smelled of fresh toast and fruit. He was still in his pajamas, watching political shows.

"Aren't you taking off soon?" I asked him.

"I just wanted to relax a bit more," he said. "I like relaxing here."

We watched together. More of the speeches we've seen over the past month.

"No one says it's going to get better soon," he said. I had heard much of the same. He stretched out on our massive two-year old couch. We bought it when we got married, anticipating a much bigger space for it shortly. It was so big we had to move the coffee table out of the way to accommodate the long ottoman it came with. The room seemed to be more a receptacle for furniture than our living space.

"I gotta say, Babe. Despite all the planning, all the looking, I'm happy here."

I had one foot out of the house, and now I've put that foot back in. 

Comments

[ByJane]

When I finished reading this (and great post, btw), I had a flash of the future: wondering what your life will become as a result of this decision. I made a similar one recently, not to return to LA. I know that putting my feet back in the door of my Sacto home has meant accepting that I live here and that I must make my life here--which will definitely make my future different.

[Lori in Denver]

I think you, and this post, have a lot to teach people (like me, for example) about where true happiness comes from. It's the energy in a place, the love, the memories, the time spent there. THAT is your life.

Not the stuff. (Except maybe the wine, hehe.)

[Adventures In Babywearing]

This was really beautiful, Jory.

Steph

[Joy]

Actually...I love your little house honey....

all in good time..... Mom ~xo

[Mel]

Writing from my own tiny house. Fear is the perfect word. There are just too many what ifs and while we had been speaking about trying to move into a single family home soon (we're in a townhouse), we've also drawn our foot back because things seem too uncertain now. Thank you for writing this.

[Dan]

I'm not endorsing waiting for a better future or the fear that keeps us where we are. I just won't do that. Maybe I'm crazy but I'm willing now -- at 58 -- to put something out there, a personal vision if you will of what it is I genuinely want. Not an exercise, not "The Secret." Just the truth for me. I'm not letting CNN (or a lot of other channels) tell me what I should believe. It's not the truth. It's not facts. It's an illusive, interpretive zone where there's an implicit understanding that fear makes the news -- and keeps making it -- no matter how blunt or subtle the newscaster's commentary. I'm not in that particular ballgame because I don't think I'm going to let fear decide for me today who or what I can be, where I live, where fulfillment lies, or what to do about the markets or the presidency. Fuck it. What I believe is we can do a lot better than this whole thing that's been dumped on us, as if somehow we have made it so. Are we complicit? Yes. Should we let it rule us?

Well, you decide.

[Cynthia Samuels]

What a wonderful account of a not-so-wonderful sequence of events. The thing to remember is that you have already taken SO many risks -- it's not like you've been stolidly sitting in that house a state of inertia. Sitting still now is smart and it sounds like the company is great (I KNOW it's/he's gorgeous.) AND housing prices are going to go down - so maybe it's all "meant to be."

[Cathy]

Your article sounds familiar if you could just fast forward about 30 years. The Hubby and I have been married 30 years. We became empty nestors two years ago. We have been planning to downsize for two years now. We have been putting off the little things like putting new tiles in the kids old bathroom, repairing a cracked tile in the living room etc. We keep planning to move to a smaller place but this place will be paid for in five more years. It's still home with all the great memories from raising our three kids here. I imagine the hubby will relax in his old easy chair to watch his football games for a few more years and that is really OK to.