It is 1994. For the better part of two years my husband and I have been looking at houses, hoping to take advantage of a soft Real Estate market. But I am now pregnant with our first child and bedridden with debilitating 24-hour-a-day morning sickness (an oxymoron, but all-too-accurate). This has put a severe crimp in our plans, as I had been doing all the legwork until now. But we are anxious to buy while prices and mortgage rates are still low, so we keep looking….
Two weeks before I deliver we move into our new home: A beautiful, brand new, 5 bedroom, 3 bathroom house, in a community neighborhood, two blocks from a shul - And all for under $270,000! They move me in, IV and all, and thus begins our life in what is to be our Dream House….
A number of things transpire over the next decade that affects the value of that house: We are doing well financially and thus make incremental investments in home improvement: a finished basement for our two boys to play in, an in-ground pool with a two-tiered cobblestone patio for entertaining, lavish landscaping to compliment the façade of the house…. Additionally, the housing market has turned around; it is 2004 and our house and property have nearly tripled in value. Unfortunately, there is an emotional deficit between us and the bottom has fallen out of the marriage.
I promise my boys that I will make sure their lives change as little as possible despite the divorce. I seek, and find, a smaller house around the corner from the only home they have known since birth, and buy it. I pay top dollar for that house (at a steep interest rate to boot), but do so willingly, in order to keep my promise to my kids. I take solace in the fact that the family we bought it from had many, many years of happiness in it (good omen) and the inexplicable truth that it felt like ‘home” from the very first time I crossed its’ threshold.
We settle in and are just as happy as could be; our modest little 3 bedroom ranch is ‘home’ from the get-go. I make sure that every room is warm and cozy and comfortable, like that favorite afghan we fight over Friday night. I know this will be the house my kids remember as “mommy’s house” when they reminisce about their childhood. “Remember that couch we had in the den in Mommy’s house?” “Remember those candles Mommy used to light in the winter – the ones that smelled like sugar cookies!” “Remember that pantry with all the snacks that had that crazy light that went on and off?” Remember, remember…. I know they will remember and I want those memories to be sweet.
The past 6 years have been good to us; we are a tight unit, my boys and I. I have become a master at living on a budget; we have everything we need and enough of what we want. Our greatest assets are our private jokes, cozy family Shabbats and our devotion to each other. I can honestly say I have never, not for one moment, missed the house with the pool or any of the trimmings of that lifestyle. Peace and love are a homes’ most valuable assets, in any market.
In the interim, the rest of the country has caught up with us; money is scarce and times are tough. I look around me and don’t see a single family that isn’t feeling some effect of the down-trodden economy…. But something so lovely has come out of that; there is a sense of common ground that our community has lacked for a long time. There’s no longer a stigma attached to not being able to afford that vacation, having to making a smaller wedding or buying camp clothes from ‘Tar-jay’. Now everyone has to think twice about putting their kids in those after school programs or going for that impromptu dinner out. Stressful? Yes, for sure. But the silver lining has been the shift in our priorities to the things that moneycannot buy; family, family time and ties.
While I was able to refinance last year when interest rates were at their lowest, I know that my house has decreased in its market value. I anxiously wait, along with the rest of the country, for our economy to improve. I look forward to the day when we can loosen our belts a little more and budget ourselves a little less. I pray that gd will help me to always be able to provide for my children’s needs, but am acutely aware that, as long as we have our health and each other, we are wealthy beyond compare.
So our greatest lesson of the latest recession? I’ve lived in the big house and I’ve lived in the small house and this much I know for sure: there’s no place like Home.
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