One More Perspective

Thirteen years ago I moved into this house with so much love, hope, overwhelm, relief and pride.  In 2012 we had moved from Oklahoma to Washington DC Metro, and I felt like I was released from purgatory.  I breathed differently, I moved about differently.  I had left the incessant “You’re not from around here, are you?” commentary behind and all the ways I was perpetually an outsider in Oklahoma.  In our new, smorgasbord city encircled by the US capital beltway, most people weren’t “from around here” and what mattered was where we were now, intersecting for moments or years on individual trajectories spanning continents and lifetimes.  In the sea of most nations represented in one smart city, I felt at home. 

For the first time in 2012, I had to learn what a jumbo mortgage was and I dusted off my prior military service benefits to obtain one.  For someone moving from Oklahoma, getting a jumbo mortgage was a signal we are about to become house poor.  Thankfully, the public school system was light-years ahead of Oklahoma, so I traded private school tuition for a mortgage payment, which had of course, doubled.  We eeked into the smallest, oldest house still left among what were now houses turning into mansions in our dynamic neighborhood, with land far more valuable than structure.  In fact, our home insurance stayed the same between Oklahoma and Washington DC despite our mortgage itself exploding.  It was fascinating to live the real estate concept of “Location, location, location!

I was hardly ever alone in this house…by myself, that is.  I’m sitting here by myself right now and it feels very foreign, and it is not at all because the house is completely empty.  In fact, I have hardly been by myself since I was a Freshman in college.  That isn’t where I was going when I was inspired to write this piece though, but it is always interesting where I end up when I write.  Where I was going was an account of the last thirteen years here, in this house of grit.  Are we better or worse off than when we arrived here?  I don’t know.  It feels complicated. 

Let me ease into the accounting…  We lost four 110-ft giant, old and beautiful trees, but we also planted two amazing ones.  This old house got older and the traffic outside it noisier, but it’s now the last few of the (sort of) affordable ones left and we breathed a lot of new life into its most critical systems like heating, cooling and electrical.  Trades people always say our house is a lot more robust than those brand new ones.  Yes, it was one hell of a house built with the 1950s heavy construction concept.

My Children taught me a lot here, unfortunately, most of it I learned after they graduated.  That’s the hardest part for me.  Not the learning, but the timing.  …like college; the concepts crystallized precisely in the subsequent semester and not while I was being graded.  Bloody hell. 

I have been fighting for a pause button this year without realizing that’s what I was doing.  I think it’s a tsunami I will not be able to suppress much longer.  I am choking on my stuckedness in regret and confusion.  I need space, which is probably odd since I stopped working in May of this year and began emptying out this house in July…but it’s not working.  I have been writing, I have done career development and career 2.0 job searching, but I am lackluster at best and melancholy most days. 

Coincidentally, my Wife and I are going to Italy in three weeks; it will look nothing like the trip Liz took.  When we planned the latest Italy trip, none of what has unfolded to become what we now know as the year 2025, was in our worst-case scenario.  Now, eleven months after committing to this trip to celebrate a 75th birthday, I am unsure it’s a good idea.  I’m not working, and our Family home isn’t yet rented.  I seem to have been late to grasping the rental market, too.  When the idea of downsizing occurred to me, DC area economy was already quietly nose-diving from the DOGE fallout; three months later, our best hope is that it rents at a price that covers that jumbo mortgage. 

This house has witnessed a lot.  I entered it portraying a very typical demographic, and I will carry out our last box as part of a very different one.  So are we better or worse off than when we arrived here?  That depends on what we measure.  If we measure the strength of our relationships, I’m going to say I hope the next thirteen years I do better.  I want to.