House Hunted.

by Alexa on September 6, 2009

I want to pick out paint colors, and decorate. I am tired of living in collections of rooms all painted a single shade of cream. I am tired of the sense of why-bother impermanence that comes with a home you cannot alter and know you will likely be leaving within a couple of years. I am tired of lugging 20 pounds of baby up to the third floor, and keeping the stroller in my car because it is too heavy to transport up and down the stairs, and separating grocery bags into perishable and non- so that I can haul up only what needs to be refrigerated. I want some sort of outside space—I’m not picky: a porch, a deck, a patch of grass—where I can sit with a book and a glass of wine on warm days. I want to have a place for the lilac trees from our wedding that are currently being lilac-sat by friends, and I want to have a place to plant something in memory of Ames. I want a washer and dryer that aren’t four flights down and that don’t require me to save nine quarters a load for laundry. I want somewhere to park, so that during winter’s myriad snow emergencies we needn’t wake early to move our cars blocks away while the plows go past. I want neighbors with children for Simone to play with. I would like the more-than-$1000 we pay a month in rent to have at least a chance of building equity rather than disappearing into the ether. I want to be able to remodel, say by installing a really nice bathtub. I want a home that is ours, that is us, that makes my heart swell when I return to it.

HOWEVER. I like being able to walk to coffee shops, homemade ice cream, a wine store, boutiques, bakeries, Indian, Italian, Thai, Japanese, and Mexican restaurants, several yoga studios, a bagelry, and just about anything else you can think of. I like it here. I like my neighborhood. The obvious solution would be to get a house nearby, but if you know where I live, you are laughing right now. There are several places for sale on the street behind us—both for well over a million dollars. There are others on the surrounding blocks with more reasonable price tags—say half a million.

There are houses we would love, in neighborhoods we would adore, for much less. But even less is too much. The houses we CAN afford are on the fraying edges of nicer neighborhoods, at best, and in neighborhoods I would euphemistically describe as “lively” at worst.

There is this one house. On the aforementioned fraying edge, a few blocks from a lake, a few blocks from much fancier homes, still mostly in the middle of the city. Less walkable, but not in a suburb, just a residential pocket of urban St. Paul. It has two bedrooms, a beautiful bathroom with a skylight and deep whirlpool tub, gorgeous woodwork and hardwood floors, a screened porch large enough for table and chairs, a second porch in back, a yard with gardens surrounded by lilac trees. It feels solid and clean and well cared for. It felt—and of all the places we have looked at, this is the only time I have said this—like home. But the “fraying edge” part makes me nervous. I thought what would make me nervous is the fact that it’s near a cemetery, but that turns out not to bother me. It is the run down auto-shop on the corner, the alley, the proximity to a busy thoroughfare. The secluded feeling that comes from being the last house on the block is nice in the sunshine, but how would it feel at night? Three blocks in the other direction, naturally, and you are among lakeside houses well out of our price range.

That’s the way of the fraying edge. I went to Sarah Lawrence, which straddles the uneasy border between Yonkers and Bronxville, so the fraying edge is something with which I have a passing familiarity. I remember riding Metro North up from the city, shocked by how abruptly the Bronx turned into Westchester, with seemingly no transitional interlude.

Weirdly, if the house were an apartment, its location on the edge wouldn’t bother me at all. Most of my previous apartments have been in neighborhoods about five years and three blocks from gentrification, but the block where this house is located is so…quiet. I tend to find houses creepy in general, at least at night, when I’m alone. Apartments feel safer—I like being able to hear the sounds of people. It is hard to get into an irrational panic spiral about a rapist surely lurking in the closet when you can hear the soft murmur of the late show from the other side of the wall. It tethers you to reason. Oh, you remember. I am here. A person among many people. I feel safer in cities than in the eerie, empty country, but even urban houses have basements perfect for lurking. When I’d housesit for my mother—in one of the city’s safest neighborhoods—I’d barricade myself upstairs and sleep fitfully, HOLDING THE PHONE.

The potential for a reprise of the drunken wrestler situation, in which loud neighbors nearly drove my husband insane, makes a condo a risky proposition. I’d dearly, dearly love a rowhouse in the city, but we don’t really have those here. I might be happy in a townhome, but those are almost all in the suburbs. We could move to Minneapolis, or another city entirely, but where?

I am suddenly in desperate want of the illusion of permanence. I might be nesting—I never DID get a third trimester, after all. Maybe it will pass. I remind myself that things go wrong with houses, and there is no landlord to call.

Still. Paint chips. I love those damn little swatches.

Where are YOU? Apartment? City? Suburb? Do you like it there, where you are? Do you have a house? Is it more expensive than you thought? Does it feel like your sanctuary? Are you typing your comment from beyond the grave after being the victim of a grisly murder? Was the murderer hiding in your basement?

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