Lately I dream about homes.
I don’t just mean this in the touchy-feely where one’s heart is kind of way (like I wrote about in this post for the Sun Times 5 years ago). I mean it in the structural, bricks and mortar kind of way.
Two years ago, on April 16, 2012, we found out we’d be moving from Nottingham to Chicago, with just three months to make it happen. You’d think finding a new home would be a high priority but we were far too consumed with more urgent details, such as getting our English flat ready to put on the market and applying for Andrew’s visa.
One panicked July evening, when we realized we were about to be homeless, we scribbled a list of our temporary dream apartment would be like. I phoned an Evanston landlord I’d rented from in my Single Girl in the City days and 10 minutes later we’d lined up a place that ticked off each item on our list: a 2-bedroom vintage apartment close to transit, my work, Chicago & Evanston. It was dog friendly, only one flight up so we could get in a piano, would be ready right when we arrived and miracle of miracles, was under $1,000 a month. I’d lived in the building from 2004-2005 and liked it, and the landlord didn’t require a credit check since he remembered me. A few days later my heat-hating English husband researched Chicago summer temps, which led right into research on air conditioners, but the very next day our landlord emailed to say he’d installed a window unit, which still ranks as one of most powerful experiences we’ve had of realizing there really is a Big Guy up there, one who not only knows the number of hairs on our heads but also that we wanted an air conditioner. Finding our Evanston apartment was by far the easiest part of our international move.
We negotiated a 6-month lease, thinking that as soon as our Nottingham flat sold we’d buy our first-ever house. I couldn’t wait to have a garden, and Andrew scoured the real estate listings daily. But, as anyone who lived through the next 18 months with us knows, our UK flat wouldn’t sell. First one sale fell through, then another, then the third and final offer dragged on for months, draining our bank account and credit and providing constant real world opportunities to practice faith, which is not as fun as it sounds.
Our flat finally sold just before Christmas last year, and we certainly celebrated. But we also mourned, for we knew as we paid off all that had accrued during that difficult year and a half that we were saying goodbye to any imminent dreams of homeownership.
Nearly two years on we are still in that apartment we got in a 10-minute international call.
Don’t get me wrong, I love it here. I really do. Andrew and I have built countless marriage memories here over board games, cups of tea, meandering conversations that would bewilder a bystander but which make perfect sense to us, and plenty of healthy Regester arguments, in which we’ve learned not to shout for fear the neighbors might anonymously slide marriage counselor brochures under the door. We’ve decorated each available space, I’ve got plants in every corner and I’ve even managed, Brother Lawrence-style, to find a certain peace in the hours spent over the sink in our dishwasher-free kitchen. (I’m still working on maintaining my calm, however, whilst trying to cook a big dinner with only a few feet of counter space and very specific appliance usage combinations to prevent a blown fuse).
We’ve trained and raised a puppy in this place and we all three survived the Great Polar Vortex of 2014 here, even when the outside air nosedived and stayed there for months on end, and I resorted to exercising Lizzy with a laser pointer in the communal basement until the lady above asked me to stop.
We’ve hosted more than a dozen houseguests in our apartment, with lots more coming this summer to take advantage of our much-mended air mattress. Andrew has recorded songs and taught piano, I’ve held small groups here and spent hours curled up on the sofa watching HGTV. At our second annual St. Patrick’s Day party more than 60 guests crammed into our home, although thankfully not all at once, and the apartment lived to tell the tale. I love that I can clean our apartment from top-to-bottom in only an hour or two, and with each passing month the closets and drawers get just a little bit more organized.
But the thing is, I didn’t think we’d still be here.
Two years ago on April 16 I walked home from the corner shop in the fragrant English spring evening air, my eyes on the River Trent across the road and the international mobile to my ear as I told my dad in awed tones that I’d been offered a job at the Evanston Vineyard church and that we were about to move to America. My mind was full of possibilities that night. It felt like a deep sea change had occurred and that, finally, our lives were about to really take off.
If you’d told me then we’d still be in the same stage of life, that of a newish young married couple without children, whose social lives line up more with our 20something friends than those our own age, I don’t think I’d have believed you. I’d have pointed out the advantages of a steady job and our good financial position as homeowners; I’d have talked about new opportunities and building on the foundation of our first two years of marriage. While our marriage has certainly been strengthened, in practical matters it’s easy to say we’ve gone back a step. We’ve gone from being homeowners with two cars to renters whose only asset is a little car of dubious quality. Careers have been challenged and goals are crystallizing through the change, but we’re by no means certain yet what God’s master plan may be.
Certain items have been packed away these two years that we thought we’d use in our own home, such as a roll of designer purple vine wallpaper we bought in Nottingham but decided not to hang in the flat’s bedroom (after papering the dining room nearly sent Andrew into apoplexy), along with other decorative and practical items that now live in storage down in the basement.
We have other things packed away, too, though they are in a metaphorical storage, items like baby names and activities and routines we’ve dreamed up for our future family. Four years ago we thought we’d need them soon, two years ago we hoped their need was imminent. They still live in storage, filed away in our imaginations under “Someday.”
I’ve had visions of buying secondhand furniture and giving it new life, of painting and picking out backsplash tile and growing my own tomatoes and planting spring bulbs when the autumn leaves fall (perhaps I need to curtail my HGTV). I still hang on to the idea of a semi-permanent guest space, where visitors from the UK and other parts of America can come stay with us for longer than a few days, and I still hope for a front door that easily swings open to admit neighbors and kids and their friends and their parents, and single folks from the church who want a taste of family life, and young couples who want to laugh and learn from our mistakes. I see community breezing in and out of my kitchen as I cook dinner and pop the kettle on, and then on again as we get distracted by chatting and I forget all about making the tea until the water has cooled.
Over the last few months Andrew and I have talked often about moving, explored a few possibilities and hit just as many dead ends. It seems clear that this apartment—and its limitations—are where we are meant to be. At least for now. And if God has given me an assignment for what feels like extended young adulthood then it is to suck all of the joys and pleasures out of this life stage while we can because somehow, someway, someday it will surely end.
So for now we continue to enjoy life in our little apartment. Lizzy still runs from the front windows to back to watch the dogs go by in the morning and evening, we still pull out the air mattress and rearrange the study furniture to fit it in when visitors arrive. I’ve bought another flower basket this growing season to hang from the tree at the very edge of my building’s property, where I can see it from my kitchen window, the purple petunias spilling over the edge just visible as I wash the dishes by hand.
We use our extra time as a couple to go downtown for free concerts or hang out at the local pub with our single friends, or we stay in and play games or watch “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”, “Downton Abbey” and “Call the Midwife” together. Andrew writes songs by the bucketful and I devour books, novels and non-fiction and poetry. And I still keep watching HGTV and storing up home decorating and home renovating ideas, just in case. Because you just never know.
