There Will Be Time

I've hit a weird anniversary that I'm not sure what to do with: thirty years in the same place. It seems significant because it's double any other place I've ever lived and exactly half my life. I like when numbers line up like that. My house closed on the 1st of November 1995, but I didn't officially moved in until Friday the 3rd. 

I was in my parents' place from age 2 to 17, and it was so boring to have such a stable home life. That sent me moving place to place for the next dozen years or so. At one point, my dad offered me the house when he moved out to live with his new wife, but I was still restless, so I declined. I sometimes can't believe I turned that down! I didn't want to live in my childhood home even though it was amazing with a beautiful forest out back; it mattered more at the time to carve my own path.

In the first five years of my place, I did all the big things I needed to do, and now I've been hitting the end point of all of all that work. Of course the maintenance turnover coincided with retiring. The furnace died in the middle of winter. After fixing one little thing after another to eke out another year, my repair dude told me it had cancer of everything: "That furnace owes you nothing!" The water heater followed soon after. Then this summer I fell through my 25-year-old cedar deck boards outside. I had to fall through a second time before replacing it all. 

I moved in here at 30 with a baby in my arms and another in my belly. The closing date didn't line up with my last place, so I needed a couch to crash on for two months with a little one and two cats. My ex offered the other end of his king sized bed, so now we have two kids!

Is that good enough??

My garden is gorgeous, even though neighbours complain from time to time. When it rains and the hostas droop over the sidewalk, if I'm not on it immediately I get a bylaw visit. If my daughter parks in front of the house but facing the wrong direction, she'll have a ticket within minutes. Some see that as security, but it sure can feel like surveillance. I just have to make sure to follow all the rules all the time; just the price of living in a "nice" neighbourhood.

But the cedars that back on to the condos out back are out of control. When I moved in, a company cut them back twice a year and I was given strict instructions to never touch them; they're not my property. At some point that service ended without notice, and cutting back years of growth is going to leave a leafless mess. I can't imagine calling any authority figure about that, but I might try to tackle it a little at a time. 

I've always preferred to roll with life instead of planning the details, but nearing the end feels like it might need more forethought. Maybe. Goal-setting is the way towards progress and getting things done, and all that important stuff, but there's something to be said for being like a tree bending in the wind, able to move as needed when the time seems right. I'm pulled towards living near water, but I also love the home I set up for my family. My two youngest were born in this house. This is an incredibly privileged position to be in, and I'm aware of a third option: living in a small apartment and helping people in greater need by selling my place. 

Aging adds the illusion of urgency, but tomorrow is still just another day. Today, I think I'll celebrate by taking a stab at cleaning out the basement. A lot has been collected down there over the years. I'm at that point of thinking that I'd hate to leave a mess for others to have to clean up. Kind of morbid, but we're heading into the years of tying loose ends neatly with a bow. I'll get to the cedars another day. 

Indeed, there will be time.

ETA: A bit of a retrospective of some of the many places I lived between those two points of boring stability! 

A recent google maps photo of my childhood home. My dad sold it to a mason, who covered it in stone. My dad chose this guy out of many offers because we share the same last name. That's how we roll! Back in my day, it was red brick with hideously bright yellow siding. But the beautiful sugar maple forest in the back is the same, maybe thinned out a little, but still an incredible luxury to grow up with. 

I moved to Ottawa for a year partly because my sister moved their with her partner, who worked nights, and she kept begging me to join her. And partly because I wasn't having a great time as a teenager. It was a pretty boring suburban place in a brand new subdivision. My new high school was an hour's walk down a highway, and a woman would sometimes pick me up and yell at me for hitchhiking when I was just walking. She unwittingly taught me to hitchhike. She was never around for the walk home, and that's was always a horror show. I've been accosted by more creepy older guys in that one year in Ottawa than in all the rest of my life put together. I had to run back and forth across a highway to escape this one dude who would pass me and pull over, again and again. Nobody considered calling the police about it. 

Then I scored my very first apartment of my own (but my boyfriend's best friend soon moved in after his parents kicked him out). It actually looked way worse when I was there. The white siding is hiding rickety stairs to that top left door, and it was full of cockroaches. I slept with a spatula to kill them in the night. When I first got it, my boyfriend said, "As long as it's not those dives facing King Street!" And it was!! I had signed the lease at night, and entered through the front, so I didn't realize how bad it was (although I spotted a roach right away). I was just happy to be out on my own and independent! I got to watch a 7-11 being built just feet from my window. I was for real pretty excited about that.   

After getting evicted from that disgusting place, I moved in with a bunch of guys across the street. We called this "the big house" and it was a party house. It was one house in from the main street, and near the hospital, so it attracted men just out of detox there. They'd sometimes offer us $50 to buy them a six-pack, and we happily obliged. It was also near the Labatt's factory, and it was relatively easy to slip between the delivery truck and receiving door to snag a 2-4, which I never did, but I definitely benefitted from. I regret that I don't have a picture of that place because now there's THIS big apartment in its place. Our house was the same style as the one below this, but grey painted brick and very run down. It had a flat roof over the garage that could be accessed from my bedroom, and we dragged a couch up there for a makeshift balcony. I was waitressing at the time, and would often go to sleep in the morning on the roof to sunbathe all day. We got sued for the damage we left behind. And so it goes. 

After that bit of lovely chaos, I decided to get a place all to myself. This is the only place I lived completely alone, and I just lived there for four months. It was in the basement with a long dark hallway (I never remembered to leave the light on for myself), and right beside a park where a couple murders happened when I lived there!! The park was a known hangout for gay men, so I felt fairly safe. Kinda.

I left there to live with that bunch of guys again in "the nice house." This was the longest place I stayed in my renting years. We were the scourge of the neighbourhood, having regular front porch gatherings and seasonal "extravaganzas." The backyard was full of dog crap, so I used to sunbathe on the front lawn, right next to the sidewalk. I can't imagine what I was thinking! And, yes, I regularly check for signs of skin cancer. Those were the baby oil days.

I loved my time there, and I only moved out into an apartment because a guy I liked said he was uncomfortable coming over with all those guys around. But by the time I moved, he was dating someone else! Figures. I quite liked the triplex, mainly because it had a separate back door access, not just a fire escape, but it's funny that I never felt allowed to sit on the front lawn. Across the back parking lot was a KFC, so that smell always puts me smack dab in the middle of the 80s. I put an ad in the paper for a roommate to take the second bedroom; she's the only unrelated woman I ever shared a place with.

Her boyfriend moved in, which got crowded, so the three of us moved into a townhouse together. It was in a new part of town, so next to a field with no bus running anywhere near it. It was handy that I already knew hitchhiking is a viable way to get around. I've been very lucky! I don't have a picture, but it's a pretty standard place. Now there's a huge strip mall right across from it, and it's on a very busy street that was all but deserted back in the day. I would have been thrilled to have that at the time.  

My first house! Through most of these years, I lived with many people in relative squalor, and I banked as much money as possible to scrounge together a down payment. I didn't buy clothes or go out much, and I was pretty spoiled by guys handing me beers. My old boyfriend and a string of others moved in, which helped double my mortgage payments each month. I just kept filling rooms with people to pay it off as fast as possible, putting ads in the paper for whoever was willing. The people who bought it from me added an apartment above the garage, but it was already a pretty big place on a double lot. It was only affordable because the neighbourhood was kind of terrifying. I didn't notice how bad things were until I had a baby and saw it all through a mom's eyes, like regularly waking up to beer cans and booze bottles littering the lawn and hearing fights in the street isn't an ideal child-raising environment. When my neighbour's kids burned my bushes to the ground, it felt like it was time to go.    

I moved into a much smaller place in a much nicer neighbourhood, and I might soon be living alone for the rest of my life. It's a daunting prospect, and I'm not sure I'm up for roommates again. They'd have to be Covid-cautious, but, more importantly, willing to give up their room every Christmas when the kids all come over! It's tricky navigating this time of life!