I became a homeowner in July of 2021. It was our first one. Fully detached, 1970’s custom build with cedar shaker mansard roof sitting on 2.4 acres full of mature trees, and a small lake. That’s right. I got me a water feature. And it ain’t just cute. It’s got fish and turtles and frogs that croak on summer nights like a natural white noise machine set to “summer nights.”
Homeownership bestowed upon me bonefide grownup status and certified me as a real American (as far as this country is concerned.) Even more, I would argue, then my Naturalization Certificate and US passport.
We bought it the way we buy most things nowadays–online. Completely and totally online. I found the listing on a website. We met our real estate agent via Zoom. I got a tour of our house on Facetime. I communicated with the inspector, the title’s company, mortgage broker, bank officer, every single person involved in the purchase of the property, of which there was a bizarrely large number, all through the internet. And Russell, my husband, and I felt totally comfortable with this method of making the biggest purchase of our lives. We are in the metaverse.
Like having kids, buying a home seemed inevitable. I am a sucker for cultural expectations. They tell me I gotta be skinny. I’m, like, barf! Literally, I barfed to be skinny. They tell me I gotta get a skin care routine. Here’s my credit card! They tell me to get married. I’m, like, I do! They tell me to have kids. I’m, like, here’s two! You gotta be a freaky Asian in bed. I’m, like, where’s that butt plug! They tell me to dye my hair, get a college degree, have opinions, watch the shows, be nice, travel, take these pills, straighten your teeth, read these books, wear those clothes, hold this bag, do weed, take psychedelics, stop drinking, go vegan. They tell me to buy a house. I’m, like, where do I sign! Like a dumbass, brainless donkey zombie, I just do it. And questions occur to me only after it’s too late.
That should have been my first clue to what homeownership would be like.
If you’re wondering why Americans are SO obsessed with homeownership, I’m not going to get into that too much. America’s real estate obsession started with, you know . . . genocide and grand theft territory. We all know this. Nobody wants or needs a blog post about the slaughter of Native Americans and slavery of Africans and all that.
What I find more interesting is watching me running and launching my own face into the two propaganda American pies filled with horseshit. One pie is called “Homeownership Makes Me A Real Grownup” and the other one is called “Homeownership Makes Me A Real American.” You think they’re gonna taste awesome because that’s what they tell you, but they’re more like stale warship biscuits infested with weevils. Hope you got a lime in your pocket, matey, cuz you’re about to get scurvy. All aboard, sucker.
***
Right now I’m sitting at my desk, looking out at my undeniably gorgeous back yard, absolutely glowing emerald green with spring verdure, flanked on the west side by our private lake/pond/creek. On the other side of the pond, the gardener of my neighbor is cutting the lawn using one of these ride-on mowers. Not the push kind. You need a ride-on mower to cut lawns this big.
As I watch him work from afar, I think about how that mower costs upwards of $7000-$8000. We looked into it. His services for the season probably cost $1500-$4000. He comes every week to keep that lawn looking golf course manicured. She, my neighbor—a middle aged, bleached blond, Lululemon wearing white woman with both kids in college, and a little white dog—is such a tidy Whitey, that she paid to cut the weeds on our side of the split rail fence that separates our properties when the house was vacant during the pandemic. Once we moved in, though, we had to tell her to cut that out. Mind your own business, I wanted to say to her, but my husband insisted on a friendlier approach and got her to cut it out nicely.
“We can’t make enemies with our neighbors,” Russell said. “I know you don’t know this because you didn’t grow up in a house, but bad neighbors are a pain in ass. We’re gonna need her agree to me dredging the lake later.”
“Dredge the lake?”
“Yeah, to make it deeper.”
“I’m sorry . . . what?”
“Yeah, we’re gonna make the lake deeper.”
I don’t know about you, but this kind of direct and aggressive intervention with nature is novel to me. I mean, when I think of changing my environment, I picture hanging a print on my wall, rolling out an area rug, buying one of those orchids at Traders Joe’s. I don’t for a moment fathom renting an excavator to change the depth of an entire body of water.
This is when I began to realize I had gotten myself into a situation for which I was completely unqualified. Again. I did it again. I did it with having kids. Knowing nothing about how to care for a baby or raise children, I gestated and squeezed out two into the world. And then proceeded to flounder with the enormous responsibility of motherhood for ten years before I got what could be considered some solid footing. I was a motherfucking retard of a mom for the first ten years of my sons’ lives. “10,000 hours!” Fuck you, Malcolm Gladwell.
***
They’re still at it, the gardeners at my neighbor’s house. I can hear their weedwhackers buzzing–my tidy Whitey neighbor, she wants her edges tight.
We have a weedwhacker. Russell’s taken it out for a spin a few times. We got a bunch of other stuff too. Like a John Deer mower with the option to turn it into a snow plow. We’ve used the snow plow once in two winters, just in time for climate change. We have a leaf blower, a hedge trimmer, a chainsaw, rakes, shovels, trowels, a pitch fork, a wheelbarrow, a scythe, several ladders, a lopper, a pole pruner, hedge sheers, a pruning saw, snow shovels, a hand tiller, a cultivator, a power washer, hundreds of feet of hose, a rake, and a hoe. The total for all this gardening paraphernalia? Shrug. We threw money at it as if money grew on trees.
Speaking of trees, our property had been left unattended for years as I already mentioned so the trees needed some TLC. We’ve got over a hundred trees and shrubs around the house, easy. That meant calling an arborist and spending close to $10,000 on tree services in the first year to fell dead trees, prune back iffy branches, mulch stumps and roots, and fertilize.
You know what other bills come with all this nature? Critter control bills. Throw in mosquito spraying service, bug spray service, and mice traps.
Then there is the house itself. And the house has all these rooms. And rooms need furniture, lighting, decoration. (Oh boy, this is my favorite part.) We bought a pool table, an Italian sofa set topped with velvet bean bags (because now that we’re grown ups, we need the beanbags to be covered in terracotta Italian velvet), a 75″ television, a king size bed, beds for the kids, another sofa and two more loveseats, a refurbished mid-century credenza, a chrome and glass display shelf that I have no room for, and more. I bought plants. OMG, so many plants.
And who can forget (because they won’t let you forget) the other phantom costs of homeownership? The garbage fee (because garbage pickup in this neighborhood isn’t included in our property tax; it’s optional, I guess, to have your garbage picked up when you’re a homeowner), education tax, real estate tax, county tax, state tax, federal tax, and income tax.
Oh wait! I can’t leave out the unforeseen costs of things breaking down, shit getting old, stuff wearing out. Little things like . . . the furnace! It croaked a month into our living in the house and had to be replaced for $10,000. (Everything that needs to be done in a house seems to cost $10,000.) The dishwasher broke in short order and had to be replaced, too. The top oven of the double wall oven crapped out during a self-cleaning sesh. The door on the microwave above the burner wouldn’t close. (How did the home inspector miss this? Shrug. I wasn’t there!) The fan above the cooking surface barely worked. The kitchen sink was so shallow I could maybe use it to soak my feet. All of that had to be replaced.
The mortgage, I quickly learned, is not the cost of homeownership.
Mortgage is the minimum.
***
Friend and family who patiently listened me moaning from the stomach ulcers that developed from our rapidly declining bank balance said these costs would slow down after the first year. But after the first year, we no longer had savings. We returned to living paycheck to paycheck. After two years of saving like a couple of grizzlies fattening up for hibernation in the wilds of the Black Hills, South Dakota, we moved to Pennsylvania into a house and got all lean and poor. Poor and lean. We’ve both lost weight.
We do save a ton of money on the home stuff because my man is handy. He loves to work on the house. Russell taught me how to hang a picture, find a stud, taught me what a stud is, fix holes in the walls, recalk a moldy shower, all when we were dating.
Since moving into the house, he’s probably saved us tens of thousands of dollars doing much of the repairs, installations, and renovations himself. Need to tar a leaky roof? Need to install a dishwasher? Need wiring for new recessed lighting? Need to lay missing wooden floor boards in a bedroom? Need to put up drywall? Need to plumb the laundry room and move the gas line for the dryer? Call your local urologist specializing in male fertility!
The man loves being a homeowner. His favorite store? Guess . . . That’s the one.
He has business being a homeowner. He is a rugged indoors person. His level of ruggedness is the only thing legitimizing our ownership of this house. Under my care, the house would fall apart. If we had outsourced all the work that he has already put into the house, the cost would make living here unaffordable, a source of dread and resentment. A lottery ticket to poverty, divorce, and depression. With him around, though, I’m able to live here in a state of ambivalence with some savings.
***
In the fall, I rake the leaves. You cannot imagine the volume of foliage that ends up in the garbage. I have to gather it with a leaf blower every week, rake it up into several giant piles, pack them as tightly as I can into paper garden waste bags, and then drag them to the bottom of the driveway on special leaf pick up days designated by the waste management people.
The first autumn in our house, I watched the leaves falling and accumulating. Just sipping my coffee, watching the leaves falling and accumulating. I looked at it from my window thinking, “Oh, how pretty.” Then some time passed and I wondered when all this detritus would decompose and go away. When that didn’t seem to be happening any time soon, I wondered if I should be doing something.
“Yeah . . . you have to rake the leaves, Hairee,” said my sister with doubt in her voice, doubt of my intelligence and competence in homeownership. With good reason.
Leaf raking at our house is an enormous undertaking that lasts well into the winter. Nature dumps its garbage all season long onto our lawn and I’m supposed to pick it up and throw it out. Now, in the natural world, of course, the leaves would eventually become fertilizer for the trees, acting as insulation for small creatures and vulnerable vegetation during the winter months. But if you want a lawn, you can’t let this insanity continue. You have to interfere with the circle of life and get those leaves out of there before it suffocates your turf.
During the three years that the house had been left vacant (the previous owners paused their plans for renovating it due to the pandemic,) Nature had creeped slowly but surely back into the house to reclaim what belonged to her. I had beetles showing up in my house daily, spider webs everywhere, mold on my wooden louvred doors, carpenter bees drilling holes in the wooden balcony, mud nests built by birds into outdoor pot lights, moss growth so thick on my brick paved side garden that it felt like carpet underfoot, a wasps nest growing in the playground set, ferns lining the walkway to the front door so thick and tall that the walkway couldn’t be seen. Mice had been in and out of the house like squatters without potty training, leaving droppings everywhere, especially in the garage and the workshop. The first day we arrived at the house, a parcel of deer stood around our driveway, right next to the cars, munching on the tall grasses lining the edge of the asphalt. They didn’t move when we came outside, accustomed to grazing on the, until recently, vacant lot and treating the property as their dining room.
I remember a fox that stopped in the middle of the road (I was putting out the garbage bin at the bottom of the driveway) one night and stared down a car; wouldn’t move even when the driver honked and inched towards it. A good five minutes later, the fox decided it had made its point and strolled away from the car, walked up my driveway, checked out my garage, and left through the back yard where it disappeared into the dusk.
As I raked and raked and raked that first autumn, I thought, “This is truly stupid.”
By “this” I meant, homeownership. The whole endeavor it seemed to me (besides being a giant conspiracy perpetuated by a whole lot of people through pushing papers and sending bills to legitimize what can’t belong to anyone), was an everlasting struggle to keep Nature from taking back what was hers. It felt to me like I had inadvertently declared war on Nature, locked myself into a never ending battle to beat her back, season after season, as I was forced to remain rooted to this one spot on a planet full of spots I wanted to go check out, but not being able to leave this spot because we have a mortgage, we have grass to mow, we have trees to prune, we have a house to maintain, we have a school district to reside in. And I thought, “What the fuck have I done?”
May 31, 2021
Then, after a time, a flock of geese will splash land on our body of water with its goslings. We’ll spot our fat ground hog waddling around the yard again. A deer will get chased by one of our cats. A hawk will eat a mouse on a log stool by the fire pit in the pouring rain. We’ll having fires in the fired pit fueled by fallen branches, and roast marshmallows on sticks whittled by the kids. My kids will kayak on the water, catch fish, turtles, frogs. We will harvest wild clay, filter it, and later mold it into bowls. Spring will reveal blooms, so many blooms, in shades of yellow, white, pink, indigo, red, and purple. Fire flies will glow on summer nights and a peach tree will bear fruit. The cats tails will get cut down by the kids and they will explode the fluffy seeds into the air making it look like snow. We will ice skate on the frozen lake during Christmas time and have hockey games with the neighbor. We’ll come back inside and drink something hot by the fireplace, which will have a Duraflame burning in it nearly everyday during the winter months. We will have guests visit us and have enough room to host them.
All this is as real as the rest. Ambivalence abounds. So, fine, I guess we’ll stay put for now.
-Hairee Lee, May 1, 2023
Saveur Days 