March 21, 2011
Deadbeat Diary, 3
So, it’s September and our house is on the market. There’s no pretending when your house was built in 2007 and at the end of 2010 it’s on the market. Everyone assumes you’re a deadbeat. Everyone assumes you’re contributing to the mess. The neighbors ask because they want the gossip. You tell the people you like before the sign goes up. There’s a need to explain.
People are nice. Too nice. They ask what the house is listed at and try not to cringe. They go to the open house and make judgments about our style choices. I know. I’ve done the same thing.
Alicia is basically 9 months pregnant and we’re forced out of the house on a nightly basis. We walk to the park and, from a block and a half away, watch the Real Estate agent show people in and try to imagine them living in our space.
I can’t decide if the fact that we picked out the tile, carpet, cabinets, banister, fixtures, etc. makes it worse. “I’m going to miss that kitchen,” I say. The things we hate about the house never come up. Like the fact that we have to go outside to get to our attached garage.
We also don’t talk about the couch we bought to fit along that wall. Or the table for that oddly shaped dining area. I try not to think about the hours I’ve spent running drip irrigation into the back yard. And we definitely don’t talk about the fact this is the house we first brought our daughter home too.
“It’s just a place,” I say, beginning to detach before we even have to pack a box.
Then we get an offer. It’s not long after the house was listed and we’re optimistic about what it means.
We cringe.
It’s hard not to feel like someone’s offered us less than nothing for the last 3 years of our lives.
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The need to explain. Exactly. Rather, your own sense that you need to explain. It’s hard to keep that from getting under your skin.
The Market. That Puritan that sees nothing but its own chance. But much of anything that’s good about a place you can hold in memory, and take to a new place.
Everything involved in this slice of life sounds awful.
I’m with Daryl. There’s Michael and Alicia and the Iz and Levi, most importantly.
Honestly, the American fetish of Home Ownership can give me a pain in my brain.
Daryl is right. But there’s (still) this feeling like we weren’t quite done there and it’s not like we ever thought we’d be there forever.
Fetish. Indeed.
My mother to me, the final year of her life: “I wish money had never been invented.”
That by way of reference to all those aspects of human life and love that the market either does not satisfy or in fact degrades.
Not that my mom was, like, a communist or anything.
Oh, Michael. I wish I could offer insight, but I just want to give you a hug.