benefits of homeownership, the kids playing in the den, and Anderson Cooper’s perpetual Breaking News report on the upcoming 2004 presidential election, my mother asks, “What about the house on Forty-first?”
The “house on Forty-first,” as everyone in my family calls it, has been in our family for over twenty-five years. It is the first house my mother bought on her own as a young woman in the ’70s. At the time, I was an only child, and lived in the house with my mother and grandmother for several years. On Forty-first, cousins my age would visit from Houston and Maryland to spend summers with us. I remember one summer night not being able to sleep because I was so excited to go to Disneyland with my cousins. I gave myself a stomachache from anticipation. And the milestone to surpass all childhood memories happened when my mother took me and my cousins, to the Cinerama Dome on Sunset Boulevard to see Star Wars for the first time. We were beside ourselves in our new movie clothes as we rode the escalator down to see Princess Leia, Luke, and Darth Vader!
My young-adult cousins in the LA area would stop by almost daily to see my mother and grandmother. We held family barbecues, Sunday dinners, welcomed neighbors as extended family members, witnessed family arguments and drunken rants between uncles and nephews, marriage break-ups, and births, and, from time to time, a visit from my grandmother’s sister from Texas, while we lived in the house on Forty-first.
In addition to summer visits with my cousins, my fondest memories on Forty-first are of times with my grandmother. Her presence held our extended family together. While my mother worked, and within the leisure of an elderly person’s routine, I spent ordinary days deepening the connection of love with my grandmother. Once a week, before 7:00 a.m., I peeked through the front bedroom window to watch her greet the neighborhood milkman, who delivered fresh milk in glass bottles to our doorstep in exchange for last week’s empty bottles. She and I would often walk to G&J Market around the corner to buy thick-cut bacon and eggs. When we returned home from the market, she would soak the bacon for what seemed like hours in the kitchen sink, in a little soap and water. Later, the smell of fried bacon and eggs and baked biscuits drifted throughout the house while we sat at the kitchen table and ate a late breakfast. Afterward, in her favorite worn smock and slippers, she would shuffle through the kitchen holding a cup of coffee, while beginning lunch preparation for the inevitable visits from her sons and grandchildren, my uncles and cousins. On Forty-first, it was just us women. My biological father never lived with us. I have vague memories of waiting for him to pick me up, and of him leaning against his car in front of our driveway. He was never invited inside like everyone else. It wasn’t until years later, on a morning walk with my mother, that she casually revealed a forgotten memory of how I used to wait for my father, who sometimes did not come when he said he would. Little did I know it would take years of crisis to spur the awakening necessary to work through the abandonment I came to associate with the simple act of waiting.
My mother and Matt still own the house after all these years, but rent it out to the daughter of a family friend we met when we moved in. The family friend, who rents the house, and I played together decades ago with the other kids on the street. One summer afternoon, several of us were outside playing and found an old pair of open handcuffs with no key. I can’t recall whose great idea it was for me to put the handcuffs on my wrists, but I did. I put them on without the slightest consideration of how they would come off. Three hours later, after extended elementary deliberation, there was nothing we could do on our own. I couldn’t tell my grandmother because she would have had a fit, and the streetlights were almost on! Most of the kids on the block had to be inside the house when the streetlights came on, so we had to get the cuffs off. At least ten of my friends walked me around the block to the neighborhood police station. I remember walking and crying on my way to the police station. Would they call my mother at work? Would my grandmother shuffle down to the station? She would have come down there alright, and none of us would have liked it. Fortunately, the police officer had a key to unlock the handcuffs, but he called my mother anyway.
When my mother suggests that Dennis and I buy the house on Forty-first from them, it is like a gift. They are willing to help us reach for something out of our reach. With the LA housing market pricing many inhabitants out of the market, this is our way in. And with Dennis’ home improvement skills, he can manage the renovation of the house. The house is more than eighty years old and has been renovated once under my parents’ ownership. That afternoon, my parents and I discuss the possibilities of the house at length: what it needs, what Dennis can do, how we will find a realtor, where we will live during the renovation, and how they can legally inform the tenant she will have to move.
A few weeks later, Dennis, my parents and I meet with a realtor, who confirms what we suspect. Dennis and I do not qualify for a home loan. However, we still want to go ahead with the plan to move into the house. The agreement we settle upon is as follows:
With ample equity in the house, my parents will refinance the house and take out a loan to renovate it. Dennis and I will move our family in, and rent the house from my parents by paying the monthly mortgage while we work on our credit to qualify for a home loan to purchase it.
Dennis agrees to completely modernize the house. To do this, it will be have to be completely gutted. Dennis, with occasional hired help, will have to tear out everything in the house, down to the studs, floors, interior walls, and windows, the plumbing and electrical wiring.
To use the space differently with an open floor plan, Dennis has to move the gas line and reroute the plumbing to accommodate the relocation of the stove, dryer, and water heater. He insulates the walls before installing new drywall throughout the entire 1,214-square-foot house, then new wiring and new copper plumbing, and rearranges the bathroom to install a built-in deck for a drop-in bathtub, stand-up shower, new cabinets, and crown moldings. Who has crown moldings in the bathroom? We do! There are new countertops and appliances in the kitchen and an island, built-in closets in both bedrooms, a newly constructed deck added onto the back of the house, new central heating, newly installed floating laminate flooring throughout the entire house, and recessed lighting in the living room and kitchen, along with a new gate to the back yard and newly planted flowers near the front porch. The demolition and reconstruction are extensive and take almost a year. For that year, we live with my parents and pay the mortgage on the house on Forty-first. Dennis completes a lot of the work on the house on weekends and sometimes after work. He saves us a fortune on labor, planning, and installation costs, and does absolutely beautiful work on the house.
In June 2005, we move out of my parents’ house into our beautiful new home with superb water pressure, no exposure to lead paint dust or chips, clear windows, a long driveway, and a spacious backyard for the kids to play freely. Three months later, in September 2005, after two children and seven years of being together, Dennis and I are married amongst sixty-five of our closest family and friends in my parents’ backyard. The details of my life with Dennis, Greyson, and Mckenna resemble perfection. Everywhere I look there is something beautiful to see.
In an unexpected turn of events, six months after moving into the house and three months after the wedding, the attempt to grasp our version of the American Dream slips away like the sun disappears below the horizon. In December 2005, Dennis is hospitalized due to the onset of symptoms for a stroke. He is thirty-three years old.
There is nothing unusual about that Tuesday afternoon, other than that, after picking Greyson up from school, I have a strong feeling I should go straight home. Usually, after school, I would stop at the park or library instead of going home. But, on this day, my intuition pulls at me to go home without delay. Instead of pulling into the backyard, closing the gate behind the car and entering the house through the back door as usual, I pull halfway up the driveway and enter through the front door. When I open the door, Dennis is sitting on the couch. He’s moaning and holding his head in severe pain. “What’s wrong?!” I ask and kneel down in front of him. “I have the worst headache I’ve ever had in my life.” I will never know why I don’t hesitate, but I tell Greyson and Mckenna to get back into the car. I help Dennis get up to walk outside and get into the car. I drive as fast as I can
