Six Years

This month marks six years that we’ve called this house our home.

It’s not the biggest house, nor is it the nicest or the newest, although it felt like all of those things and more that dreary, rainy November afternoon. To us, the young couple who had spent the first two and a half years of their marriage living in a small one-bedroom loft apartment with concrete floors and inefficient heating, it was opulent. I remember sinking my toes into deliciously warm, brand new carpet that first night and being incredibly grateful that I got to live in such a place.

Living here has left visible marks on this house, most of which it does not deserve. When we had cats, they shredded several parts of the carpet. The wallpaper in the bathroom has started to peel away from the wall, steam from the showers having slowly melted the glue. There’s a hole in our ceiling from when my husband slipped in the attic a few years ago and his booted foot fell between the rafters, bursting through the sheetrock like a knife through butter. Our children have decided that beige walls are the perfect place to express themselves, and often collaborate with various Crayola products to accomplish that goal. There are places where the sticky part of a command hook or speaker wire conduit has peeled off layers of paint.

I admit, there are times when I look at how much work this house needs and I feel disheartened. A lot goes into owning a home, which in itself is an incredible privilege so many aren’t able to experience. Sometimes I find myself frustrated at its shortcomings, as if our past selves should have foreseen our current needs.

But the truth is, this house is perfect in its imperfection. The things that need to be repaired or replaced, the wishes for a bigger laundry room or more storage or a sensible home for a litter box, don’t really matter.

For longer than we anticipated, two of our three bedrooms were empty and unused and silent. Our plans to turn one of them into a nursery kept getting pushed further and further down the line, as month after month came and went without a positive pregnancy test. I remember so well the twangy echoes of those empty rooms, the heaviness I carried around in my chest as I wondered if everything we’d worked so hard for, everything we’d sacrificed, in order to buy this house had been in vain. If the backyard and the decent school district wasn’t needed, after all.

Today, I step on peg puzzle pieces, Legos, and plastic dinosaurs several times a day. I find tiny socks and small pairs of Disney Princess underwear tucked into my pockets when I raid the clean laundry before heading to the office. We are bursting at the seams with toys and clothes and shoes and sippy cups and water bottles and empty diaper boxes and forgotten pouches of applesauce. Those rooms echo now with delighted screams, angry screams, playful banter, and the same three children’s TV show theme songs. Space and silence are very hard to come by, and I couldn’t be happier about it.

I don’t know what the future holds, but I know this house will not be our home forever. But it has seen us through the hardest times in our lives - infertility, political upheaval, a freaking pandemic. No matter what happens next, I will always be grateful for this “starter” house.