We were going through some old paperwork the other day and came upon the property listing for our house from 1991.
At first I was struck by how short our shrubs looked in the old photo. And then it hit me. We’ve been in this house 20 years.
Our “new” house.
It was built in the 1970s — which also seems more recent than it should. But when we moved in, it was new to us.
Twenty years. No wonder the drawers of the “new” refrigerator have cracked. I’ve been overloading them for two whole decades.
It was a compromise house — right school district (for us) and a separate bathroom for the girls — but not our dream house. We’ll move in a few years when we find that house, we told ourselves.
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Let’s see. 1991. The country was in a recession that, in retrospect, looks like a cloud briefly passing overhead.
George H.W. Bush was in the White House looking for 1,000 points of light. Gameboys were hot, Operation Desert Storm was brief and gas cost $1.25 a gallon.
A computer scientist in Great Britain introduced something called the world wide web.
The next year, the former governor of Arkansas would oust Bush I from the White House because, well, “It’s the economy, stupid.”
The microeconomics of our household and neighborhood went through changes over the decades that followed. Four different families have lived in the house next door. We’ve gone through five generations of computers in the house.
If the walls could talk, they’d tell of sleepovers, birthday parties, prom dresses and graduation dinners.
Twenty years.
Our feeling of “look at all this space” when we moved in has slowly evolved to “we’ve got to get rid of some of this stuff.”
That’s part of what’s wrong with the economy, in my opinion. Baby Boomers like us have moved from the Age of Acquisition to Era of Enough.
Enough, Ed says, when I bring home another kitchen gadget. Where are you going to put that?
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Still, there’s a newness about 20 years. My parents have lived in their house since 1960 — more than half a century.
The stairs in their house have become a challenge, and signs of deferred maintenance abound — invisible to Dad, frustrating to Mom.
Now and then when I talk with my brother and sisters, one of us will say in exasperation that Mom and Dad should move into something more suitable.
Dad says he’s game; he’ll take a mobile home with a yard of Astroturf and a river view.
Mom intends to live out her life in that house, and I feel sure she will. Knowing the memories and possessions we’ve stuffed into our own closets in just 20 years, I think I understand how she feels.
If a man’s home is his castle, a woman’s home is her nest — built with twigs of experience and care that surround us with comfort after the chicks have flown the nest.
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I’m wondering how these years will look in retrospect —the years of The Great Recession — after another 20 years, pass.
This is no mere passing cloud.
Barack Obama is in the White House looking for hope. Smart phones and iPads are hot, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are dragging on and the volatile price of gas seems stuck well above $3 a gallon.
“The Web is dead,” Wired magazine declared last year as consumers embraced smartphones and mobile technology.
And who knows what will happen in the race to the White House next year? Is there a GOP governor out there playing his saxophone below the radar?
For us personally, thoughts of moving to a dream house evaporated with the realization that what we have is more than just enough, it’s home. We are fortunate to have jobs and a house when so many have lost both.
Why is it that technology races forward at a speed unimaginable in 1991, but the wars’ resolution and economic recovery can’t reach dial-up speed?
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Well, we’re all in this together. Sometimes it feels like a prolonged bad mood, manifested in political acrimony and general testiness.
In the best-case scenario, the new economic realities will return the country to a simpler way of life. Less acquisition of stuff. (I’ve hoarded enough books and sweaters to see me to the end of my days.) More appreciation of family, friends and the world around us.
Trimming ivy on our porch the other day, I eyed a vine that had crept its way across a step, a new offensive in its quest for porch dominance.
For once, I was in the moment, appreciating the ivy’s perseverance instead severing it. I put the clippers away.
Getting sentimental about the ivy really is going too far, but the ivy and I go back a long way — 20 years. It’s another twig in the nest. It has its place.
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Elizabeth Cook is editor of the Salisbury Post.