Investment? Did she really buy it for profit? ““Of course! What else?’’ she said. ““A home should be a way of increasing capital.’’ I thought about that concept of investment. I never considered a home as a moneymaker. Did it matter that my property did not increase in value?
Six months after I bought my two-bedroom condo I could have turned it over for $25,000 more than I’d paid for it. Real-estate prices had skyrocketed, and all my friends advised me to ““Sell! Sell! Sell!’’ I’d be $25,000 richer, but where would I go? Back into the rental market? No way. The third-floor loft–with its fireplace, its large, sunny windows where my cactuses waxed prolific, and its outside balcony where I grew my pesto ingredients–suited me. It still does. It’s as comforting as a warm flannel bathrobe on a cold winter night. Ten years later my dogs and I are firmly entrenched in our nest. Even though its ““value’’ has been reduced by some $20,000, I don’t feel I’ve lost a thing.
My neighbor is young, probably half my age, and I suppose the generation gap also includes the idea that money invested should always grow. Today many people live above their incomes in expensive homes. Their latchkey kids have matching beepers, and the microwave works overtime as both parents struggle to support it all. What is a home to the younger generation? Is it really just a financial investment? A profitmaking business? Shouldn’t a home be a place of memories–memories that will take us through life, directing, always teaching, supporting? Is home no longer a place of comfort?
I remember the house I grew up in. I never knew any other. It was more than 100 years old when we moved in and needed a lot of repairs. It had a dank cellar with a coal bin in the back and an old-fashioned furnace my father–and, after he died, my mother–would stoke at 5 in the morning. I remember its rumbling sound and the smell of the heat as it wafted through the rooms, warming our bodies and souls. We didn’t think about our home as a moneymaker. It was a place to live, a place to grow. My mother dubbed it ““the house that Jack built,’’ laughing musically every time she said it.
I remember the giant icicle that formed every winter outside our back door. We went in and out cautiously so as to preserve the frozen crystal that sparkled when the sun kissed it in the afternoons, melting it just a bit. But it was always there the next morning, still thick and huge and miraculous. I can still smell the aroma of stews and soups permeating the whole downstairs when we’d come in on a cold or rainy day. And I can picture all us kids at night sitting around the kitchen table doing homework. We squabbled and fought, but our mother was always there to intervene.
I remember the funeral cortege waiting outside for the family to assemble when my father died and the neighbors crying for us eight kids. A few years later, there was another family procession with my sister in her wedding gown, all us kids in the wedding party and the omnipresent neighbors crying for sentiment’s sake, my mother prouder than a sailing ship. I remember the black hall telephone and the conversations that took place on it. I recall the look on my mother’s face as she told the doctor that she would place her 8-year-old son in Sloan-Kettering first thing in the morning. (In those days most people never walked out. But my kid brother did.) The same look was there when she told my 20-year-old marine brother how much she loved him. He’d called to say goodbye. We knew where he was going, but he was not at liberty to say. The Bay of Pigs was supposed to be a secret invasion. We thought we’d never see him again. When I think of my father, I see a tall, thin man sitting in an overstuffed chair by the window, reading his paper, blowing blue smoke in the air.
I left when I turned 23 and made my own life. I took with me images and voices: the family night on Sundays, when we all had to do something–sing a song, tell a story, each competing with the other. My sister would recite the same poem every week–““That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall’’–but no one minded because she hammed it up so well.
I remember the night when and the room where my older brother accidentally cut me with a razor. It was my first and only fistfight with my 4-year-old sister–I was 5. At the time, he’d been cutting out his art work, and, as he pulled us apart, he slashed me on the arm. I shall never forget his stricken face. I still carry the scar, but his caring has made it invisible.
I remember, from when I was a child, the old-fashioned baby’s bathtub my mother placed in the middle of the kitchen table. If she was called away, someone was always around to hold the baby safely until she came back. As far back as I can remember, I always had a baby brother. But most of all, I remember ““Danny Boy.’’ When she had time, my mother played the piano. She played nursery tunes and ballads, but ““Danny Boy’’ was her favorite. When she played it on our beat-up Steinway, all of us stopped to listen.
We had a lot of celebrations in that old house: 3 christenings, 5 first holy communions, 7 confirmations, 16 graduations, 5 weddings and innumerable prom nights. We buried our two cats and countless birds in the backyard. My older sister officiated at the funeral services, which were attended by crowds of neighborhood kids. And, of course, there were the Christmases. I shall never forget the 25-pound turkeys it took to feed a family of 10 or how the Christmas tree sagged from too much canned frost we kids thought looked beautiful. It was our tree, our holiday, our home.
After we were grown and had all moved out my mother sold our old house for a song. She and my father had bought it for a song. What an investment!
