Growing up my family and I were
what some people might have called “Baltimore Gypsies”: a nomadic clan
traveling from house to house and side of town to side of town every two years
or so. By the time I was 15 we had lived
on Schroder Street (west side), Vine Street (west side), Druid Hill Avenue
(east side) Calvert Street (east side), Calverton Road (west side), Warwick
Avenue (west side), Eagle Street (west side), Fulton Avenue, (west side),
Furrow Street (west side), oh and there was a brief year in Hartford,
Connecticut somewhere in there as well. Sometimes the moves were prompted by my
mother becoming bored or growing out of love with a certain neighborhood but
more often financial difficulties forced us to abandon a house we owed back
rent on for a new abode. Despite so many moves, so many new schools and so many
new friends, the moves were never sad occasions to me. They just meant news
starts, new places to have Christmases and represented new chapters in my
family’s life.
Much of the same continued when I
got married at 20 years old. Working part-time at the bank while taking 18-college
credits and with my new bride working part-time at the Children’s Place and
part-time at the Body Shop meant that we made a combined 25k a year and shared
a car whose right front axel often fell off when you hit a pot hole (true
story). So to say our living options
were limited would be an understatement.
Our first “house” was a two-bedroom townhouse in Highland Village
Townhomes. It was a gem: No A/C, No dishwasher, No backyard. But it did include
mice all throughout the trash bin next door, random Saturday morning cookouts
with loud Hispanic music blaring from our neighbors’ speakers and a frequent police
presence but not in a cozy “care about the neighborhood/ Roland Park” sort of
way. The highlight was sneaking a window
A/C unit into our bedroom so that our newborn son wouldn't die of heat exhaustion
in the Baltimore July heat and we wouldn't have to pay extra for the rent. Owning
a home seemed the farthest thing from possible: we just wanted some A/C.
Our second house was a bit nicer in
the Dundalk of Anne Arundel County: Glen Burnie. It had some nice stuff:
central A/C, a dishwasher, no mice. A cop even lived next door (nice ones who
weren’t freaked out by young black men at night…). The only problem was across
the street…where my in-laws lived. And while I love them dearly (I really have
grown to love them) , living across the street from them was probably not the
best idea we ever had. Lets just leave
it at that. (LOL)
When we found out we were having
twins, we scrambled to find a 3rd house. We stumbled into Arbutus
after a larger house in Brookyln Park was snatched away from us right before we
were to move in (a blessing in disguise). Like Goldie-Locks and the 3 bears, this
one felt “juuusst right”: Three bedrooms, a basement to store our things, a
small backyard for the kids to play in. For the past five years, we’ve watched
our family grow from 4 to 6 and we’ve done everything in it from hosting our
first Thanksgiving and Christmases, Baby Showers and birthday parties. But like
the two houses before them, we outgrew our townhome. With a son in high school,
another nearing middle school and 5 year old twin girls with a growing
wardrobe, it felt like we were living on top of each other.
Today we
closed on our first home. It has rooms for both boys, a fancy closet for my
wife (with apparently no room for any of my clothes) and a backyard big enough
for the kids to rip and run for years to come. It's the kind of house I would
have thought was never possible for me as I bounced with my family from house
to house as a kid. And as moving date
draws closer, I am reminded of Luther Vandross who once famously sang, “A Chair
is still a chair…even if there’s no onnnnneeee sitting there! But a chair is
not houuussssee and house is not a home….” I finally get what Luther meant. I’m
not looking forward to moving boxes and setting up new furniture but I AM
excited to move our memories, our laughs, our tears and our special bond into a
new space where they can continue to grow.
I’m excited and blessed to be able to help provide my family with the
stability I sometimes lacked as a kid but more importantly, what I’ve come to
realize is that long before we had a house, with all the love we share, we
already had a home; and no house can provide that kind of stability.
