Tag: home

Home is

Leave a comment

My husband and I purchased our first (and current) home almost 8 years ago. The decision came out of a steep hike in rental costs, need for more space (e.g. not an apartment) to accommodate the birth of our first baby, and was financially possible due to a fortuitous event in my husband’s career.

We were over the moon when we bought it. My parents purchased their first home in this country when I was 14 years old. My in-laws lived in a humble house (side note: I have known my husband for 15 years and have still never been to his house because his mother-in-law is embarrassed to show it to me) and still owed mortgage until we paid it off for them before purchasing our house.

It was a blessing and felt like a huge lift. It was the most money we had ever spent on something. We felt like adults. For context, when we moved to our current location four years before the purchase, we had a negative net worth due to my hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical school debt, very little savings and zero investments. We had received no financial education from our families (this is not a complaint – we received everything we needed in terms of love and encouragement from them, and they also didn’t have the financial education to pass down to us) and they were not in a position to lend us money for a down payment. Buying this house was a big deal for us. I remember sitting out on the deck after we closed and received the keys for the first time. We sat under our fig tree and thought about the years to come.

I don’t recall what our dreams looked like then, but I can tell you that we have been so fortunate these past 8 years. After struggling with sub-fertility (my doctor’s term) due to secondary hypothalamic amenorrhea caused by excessive exercise and caloric restriction, we were blessed with 4 amazing children. I have had an incredibly successful, stable and fulfilling career with the same employer and supportive colleagues who feel like family. My husband has been able to take career risks and has taken on a variety of roles with a concrete financial upside. The equity in our home has grown significantly these past 8 years.

But there’s a catch that others have made us feel self-conscious about and it’s this: our house is a bit over 1700 square feet. It has 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. It sits on a small plot of land. This has apparently caused some concern for our friends and acquaintances. I say this facetiously, but it has been quite surprising to me how many people see it as fair game to comment on. Starting when I was pregnant with my second child, people began asking us when we were planning to move. Many people have said “I don’t know how you do it with all of your kids!”. In truth, some of those questions have been inspired by our own ambivalence through the years. What is enough space? Is there a certain amount of square footage that is appropriate to have per family member? Do we need a two-car garage? A guest room that is always open to accommodate visitors? A larger yard?

Here are the amazing things about our house:

-it is incredibly affordable, allowing us to commit a much larger chunk of our income to investments, savings, travel, helping our families, childcare and private education for our children

-it is mostly updated, with us having poured money into new bathrooms, a new garage, a new detached office, landscaping and aesthetic odds and ends

-our neighbors are normal and kind; we are used to them and they are used to us; they don’t complain about our kids making noise and we reciprocate by being the best neighbors we can possibly be

-it is very close to my job, which has allowed me to be very involved in my kids’ lives, despite having a full-time career

Some of the ways in which we have made due with the space:

-we have 3 kids in one room currently, and our youngest in a separate room

-I have an “in home” office in our new garage; when the kids are at school/camp, I work from the desk in our bedroom, but I have a place to do video visits when needed that is quiet and private. One of my friends, upon seeing this, commented that I have a knack for using small spaces, and this comment warmed my heart

-when visitors come, we give them our bedroom and sleep in the playroom, on an air mattress

And yet I sometimes hear a gnawing voice in my ear that says this home is not enough. Through the years, friends who lived in our neighbor when we moved in have left. Many have moved out of state, to lower cost of living areas where they could afford larger homes. Some have moved into larger homes in our area, having taken advantage of their home equity plus financial gains. Now that we are at a private school, many of our friends live in homes that cost many times more than ours. It is hard sometimes to come back from visiting these homes and not feel like our space is “less than”. Despite the comforts of our space, despite the nooks and crannies we are so accustomed to, there is still that feeling of “wouldn’t it be nice?”.

And just this week, my son’s friend came to our house. On the drive over my son asked him “How would you compare my house to yours?” and he responded with “I like mine better, also – it is much bigger.” Like most aspects of parenting, our children’s heartbreak hurts more than our own. I don’t want my children to feel like their house in “less than” and maybe I am just projecting here, because my son moved on to another question without comment or a second thought.

But despite these thoughts and mild annoyances, I stick to my belief that our home is perfect and just enough. It is the doorway through which we carried all four children home after their births and hospital stays. The playroom evolved from the place we held them to sleep while watching TV to stay awake to where they crawled, walked, tumbled and now play video games. I see them hug and snuggle together before bed or run around the backyard collapsing into giggles, and I know we are not doing them a disservice. They are learning to be close, to be together, to be compassionate siblings. We have great kids and I think this home has played a role.

The day might come when the kids needs more space – when they are teenagers and want to blast music and lock themselves in their rooms and hang out with their friends alone. When they’ll have real homework and need a quiet place to work. When my husband and I will need privacy for conversations. But today is not that day.

Have friends or families commented on your living arrangements? How do you respond?

The Village

Leave a comment

I was recently surprised to learn that I had lost my desire to move back to New York. As recently as a few months ago, when people would ask me whether I envisioned myself staying in California forever, I used to respond with “Probably, because I don’t think I can convince my husband to live anywhere else.” Now I pause, because the answer is that I can’t quite imagine living anywhere else.

When and how did this drastic shift occur? I left New York when I was 18 years old. To be honest, I was thrilled to do so. I lived in the suburbs outside of NYC, had moved during my freshman year of high school (NOT a good situation), and was excited to “discover the world”. I floated around New England for college and medical school, and spent a requisite year living and working in NYC. When it was time for residency selection, my husband (also an East Coaster) and I were adamant that we needed to get out of the cold. He wanted to work in California and I was game to live in California and so I applied and was accepted.

We flew to the West Coast with one suitcase. (I can imagine myself telling this story to my children one day, at which point they’ll roll their eyes at this particular sentence.) We had less than $5,000 combined in our bank accounts. My husband was unemployed (“between jobs”) and I was days shy of starting my intern year. We rented a small unit in a house of four units total and decked it out in IKEA furniture. My husband bought a Samsung flat screen TV which we still own 8 years later. We weren’t married yet but reasoned that we needed to move in together because the rent was too expensive to swing two apartments. When he proposed to me, the engagement ring was the most expensive thing we owned. We didn’t have much but we were so happy.

In the past 8 years, we’ve spent 5 of them living together (we were apart for 3 years while I completed my residency), got jobs, got married, bought a house, tucked away money for retirement, had 3 kids, tucked away money for college education, and created the life we always wanted – one we could have never quite imagined when we landed in California in 2010.

Yet there were bumps in the road. I started my first job out of residency in 2014 and had a baby 3 months later. I’ve had 2 additional children since. I had no idea how difficult it would be to raise a family away from our families. It often felt impossible. I vividly remember those first colic-filled weeks with our oldest. We had help for a few of them but were on our own most of the time and I cried constantly. When I went back to work I was convinced there was no way I could juggle motherhood and my career without help. Most of our acquaintances at the time were my husband’s friends and, although mostly good people, they just weren’t my people. Is that a terrible thing to say? I hope not. You know that feeling when you just click with someone? When you can tell them anything – lay all your cards on the table, be completely vulnerable – and they will accept you wholeheartedly? Let’s just say I didn’t get that vibe from his people. And that’s what I struggled with the most – not having someone I could text frantically when our first was up at all hours of the night, not having someone I could ask to watch him for an hour while I took a breather, not having a tribe to commiserate with.

So I put myself out there. I met a group of women I now call “The Mommies”. My first mom friends! Now, the group has changed dramatically these past 4 years as moms move away and group dynamics shift, but we have each other’s backs, an ongoing calendar of events, never-ending birthday parties, and most importantly the knowledge that we have known each other since our little ones were just months old. I rekindled friendships with people from my intern year and became closer to co-workers with young children. I met more moms through preschool and subsequent “new mom” groups as more children joined our family. We acquired a network of people who have helped us out in some capacity around the house – gardeners, painters, nannies, cleaning crews, etc. Today, our nanny saw that I was clearing out our shed for some upcoming work and (unsolicited) called her husband to see if he would be willing to pick up all of the items we were throwing out to save us the hassle. He came by an hour later and I was so happy I could have cried. With such distance between ourselves and our families, these random acts of kindness mean everything.

I also have to admit that there are serious perks to living in California: great weather, tons of diversity, generally liberal politics. It’s also true that we both love our jobs and our house. But the game-changer for me was truly the evolution of our community and little village. We’ll see how we feel as the kids get older and schedules become more demanding but, for now, I am truly loving where we live, and this is the first time since 2014 that I’ve been truly able to say that.