I Done Good

For today’s confession, I invite you to go back in time with me 30 years. I have to write this now while I still remember it.

I might have taken the long path to becoming an adult by dropping out of college for a few years and then going back to finish my degree, after which I moved out of state with no goals other than to start over. I was a server and bartender for maybe 18 months before moving across the country to be a nanny and then landing an entry-level job at a major corporation. My early 30s were spent getting out of the financial mess that student loan bills and starting life on your own can create while earning little money.

I had a family “adopt” me and let me live rent-free for a year, and then, when they needed their room back, they helped me get into a cheap but questionable location, which we quickly cleaned and painted into an almost charming tiny place. Then my friends bought their first home and asked me to live with them as a win/win, so they had a tenant to help with their first mortgage and I had cheap rent.

This put me in the position of paying off that obnoxious student loan and becoming debt-free. I love and appreciate my friends who supported me in getting to that stage in life, and yet I still longed for a place of my own. We liked to take walks in the evening through the neighborhood, and I would express how much I wanted a house that was mine. My friend countered that I was always welcome with them.

I was both extremely grateful to them, and I wanted a place to call mine. I wanted the master bathroom, not the one down the hall. I wanted to decorate it my way. I wanted my own kitchen to cook in. I didn’t want to be the ‘fringe’ person on the edge of other people’s lives—wanted and belonging, but still a loose thread. I wanted to be embroidered into a home of my own.

On quaking legs, I started looking. There was a new subdivision being built, and I was drawn to it. It was a ’90s neighborhood. I could pick my floor plan and a number of basics or upgrades out of five or six choices. But first, I had to meet with the mortgage man.

I grew up poor, and that shame had not left me. I felt completely undeserving of this home I was asking him to finance. He told me so many times, “I wish all my clients were as together as you.” Although my down payment came out of my 401(k), I didn’t have debt, and my salary was sufficient for the mortgage.

Even as I watched it being built and visited it every day, it felt like it was too good to be true. At closing, I thought I was going to throw up. I was ready for the dream to be ripped out from under me—

But it wasn’t.

I walked away with keys to my first house on Serenity Drive.

I cannot possibly tell you how much that meant to me. I had a place that belonged to me. I could invite others and not have to be the tagalong. And I wasn’t so house-poor that I couldn’t furnish it. I was able to put together a lovely home.

I wanted to share my success with family and invited my sister and her husband and my father and his wife to visit. I didn’t get off work in time to greet them, but I left them a key to make themselves at home.

When I arrived, they had already scoped out the house and surrounding area. I missed their first reaction. What I heard from the two men was criticism.

“These look like tract houses.”

“There is an industrial area about a half mile outside the neighborhood.”

“These interior doors aren’t made out of wood. I think they are nothing but cardboard.”

By the second day of the visit, I was pissed and had reached my limit of “be nice” to my guests. I pulled the two men into the living room for a conversation—make that confrontation.

I first said, “How you guys respond to what I’m about to tell you will determine if I choose to cook for you for the rest of this visit.”

I told them verbatim what I heard from their mouths and that they were hurting my feelings. Furthermore, neither one of them had been in my life to teach me any different, so they had zero say-so in my choices.

From this point forward, they were allowed to say one of these three things:

I like it.

You done good.

I’m proud of you.

If they could not say that, they needed to keep their damn mouths shut.

While they thought my reaction was over the top, since they just wanted to be helpful, we somehow got through the visit, and they still got to eat.

Shortly after, my next-door neighbor stopped by to visit. She smiled as she looked around and said, “I love your house. It’s so welcoming and peaceful.”

 I’ve bought and sold 4 more homes since that starter home.  Out of curiosity, I just pulled it up on Zillow and saw it had tripled in price since my purchase.  Yes, I still feel a bit of smug satisfaction at my choices and my boundaries.