Home is Where the Heart Is

For many young adults renting an apartment is a small step on the way to buying a house and finding a "home."  For me, renting gave me my home.  The home I had always wished for. A home in the perfect neighborhood with the perfect neighbors.  When JO and I stumbled on this apartment five years ago we instantly fell in love with it.  It's big, with a great layout, and an even better location.  We often joked that if ever had to move our rental agent would hate us because our demands would look something like this:

*an apartment next to a goat shop because any day is made better by a goat delivery
*a kitchen big enough to host 25 of our closest friends or play kickball in the night before a big storm
*centrally located right in Inman Square...not on a side street...right in the Square.  We need to be able to get Christina's ice cream during a commercial break without missing anything
*at least 4 windows in the living room
*25+ kitchen cabinets
*a stock room (aka- our second shower)
*lots of closets and huge basement storage unit
*neighbors who immediately hug you like a grandmother when you tell them your mother just died
*neighbors who offer to carry your ridiculously heavy school bag home
*neighbors who give you water after a scary fire alarm
*two bedrooms and an office for a grand under market value

What agent would want to work with us?  We'll soon be finding out.  We got notification today that our landlord plans on selling our unit asap.  I have not cried so gutturally since I got a phone call telling me my mom had died.  I actually had almost the same stunned reaction and then it all hit me and I started screaming.  I know for a lot of people this seems absurd.  It's just an apartment.  But for me it's not.  Our apartment is so much more than an apartment.  It's my home.  It's my life.  It's where I celebrated happy things and lamented over sad ones.  It's my home base for enjoying everything the city has to offer.  It's my window that always has something exciting going on outside...from goat deliveries to shopping carts relay races and RR shenanigans my apartment has given me so many amazing memories that have made me feel truly alive for the last five years.   Part of what makes me me is this place and where it's located.  I wish it was easy to find another place like this in our neighborhood.  I wouldn't have spent the last few hours crying.  But the reality is that it is not.  Prices are skyrocketing in our neighborhood.  An apartment with less square footage and a bad layout goes for $2800 and sells for upwards of $500,000.  The chances that we will make it through this change and still live in this neighborhood are very slim.

JO keeps telling me we can replace this place.  That we can find something in this neighborhood.  But it's more than just the location.  This apartment really is special and I can't imagine finding something like it here.  It really has become my home filled with all of my memories.  I imagine these are the emotions I should've felt when we sold my dad's house but that place never felt like home, even when I lived there.

Maybe it's because we found our "home" while renting.  Maybe we did this whole grownup life thing out of order.  Maybe because in the past five years I have loved my life so very much.  For so many years I yearned to get back to the city and it finally happened here.  For the first time in a long time I felt like I belonged somewhere.  I understood what "home" meant.  My fingers are crossed that this will all work out but the realist in me knows I better enjoy every minute of the next few months.    I am grateful that I have this blog to look back on and remember all of these special times here!