Finding Home

We engage in frequent pushing and pulling at the ideas of buying an existing home in the city to gut and renovate, and buying land outside of it on which to design and build something custom. We’re six months out from the expiration of our current lease, which doesn't matter much because we are required to wait three years from the date of our short sale before we’ll qualify for another mortgage. We’re still just a year and a half out.

While our little Cape Cod rental is sufficient, we have been chronically unmotivated to invest in our living space. At some point, especially if we decide to stay here for another year we’re going to have to shake ourselves out of renter mentality and embrace what we have to work with: decrepit bathrooms, lack of storage space, outdated kitchen, and all.

On the other hand, there is a sense of relief at the idea of staying put for another year or two, even if that means staying in this house, because we really love our neighborhood and know that the logistics required to move a household can feel like a herculean effort.

Regardless of whether we decide to stay or move in the short-term, we can and often do fill up hours when we have them, daydreaming about what will come next, after the waiting is over. What can we create with the resources we have, what will the process look like, and how will it be to manage either option while also keeping pace with our growing family and careers. (The topic of more babies has become a push and pull discussion all its own, but I’ll save that for another day.)

Over the last year I think we've identified almost every reasonable permutation of house type and location, tracing the trajectory of each option along a logical path from what our needs are now with two toddlers, to what our needs will be later as our family gets bigger and grows older. We've even projected what our needs may look like when the kids are gone. Our next house will be the home in which our family grows up. Ahh, I cannot wait.

A month ago we came very close to putting down an offer on a couple acre lot in one of our favorite areas, made possible only by the fact that we could have paid for it in cash. It wouldn't have been perfect, but it would have been pretty cool. The problem was the creek running through the property, which indicated some substantial zoning and flood plain restrictions. We were excited to think creatively about ways to design a home that would accommodate the land, but after a few weeks of research and inquiry we decided to move on.

Through our discussion it has been interesting to see that we keep finding our way back to two things: nature and a desire to design the spaces we live in. After fighting our own logic and imagination about what it means to live in the city or to live in the country, I think we are finally open to listening to what resonates within us. Recently we've come back around to an idea we had early in our process, when we still lived in northern Virginia, which would take us far outside the city limits but inspires us with the possibility of buying up a large parcel of land (5-10 acres) and then nestling a home somewhere in the middle of all that nature.

Whether the homesteading lifestyle is considered a fad, or a backlash to the feminist movement, or an incredible opportunity to reduce our carbon footprint, return to a family centered way of living, and improve our self-sufficiency, I am drawn to the idea of making our home and the land around it a primary focus of our collective time and energy.

I want to pursue the romantic entertainments of homemaking like foraging, harvesting, canning, pickling, and fermenting. I imagine a fragrant and overflowing garden of flowers and a large year ‘round garden with fruit bushes and vegetable patches; beekeeping for the flowers, and honey, too; and backyard hens to raise and gather eggs from; maybe even a cow. I long for a more intimate connection to our food chain, to the earth, and to each other. I want to feel called to the land we live on. I want the kids to grow up knowing nature like it was a part of them, to claim the uninhabited wilderness as their own, and to have a relationship with something bigger than themselves.

I'll leave you with this poem by Wendall Barry. It's been on my mind since I first read it yesterday:

The Peace of Wild Things

When Despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, 

I go and lie down where the wood drake 

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. 

I come into the peace of wild things 

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water. 

And I feel above me the day-blind stars 

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.