It was a humbling experience, after a decade of living on my own, to find myself back in my childhood room. It was clear that it wasn’t just time that had passed – the room that had once been full of my junk was now crammed to the gills with the last crap and testament of nearly half a dozen of my deceased relatives. Fortunately the relatives themselves have all been laid to rest, as my allergies seem to be worsening as I get older.
Of course I’d always had the choice not to move back in; I’d had a secure, well-paying job teaching public school music in Colorado Springs. From the outside it appeared that I was pretty well set up ($40K a year will get you pretty far in most of the country) until a combination of burnout, a bad breakup, and my grandpa’s steep decline sent my mom and me hobbling across the Nevada desert in my $1500 overheating-prone Subaru towards home.
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Then: my grandparents bought the house I was raised in for $13,000 in 1963.
Now: Today, Zillow prices the house at over half a million dollars. The only thing that has changed about the house itself is that it’s 56 years older.
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Thanks to my choice of career (i.e. anything other than tech), living even in a remote corner of the East Bay with several roommates tricky to pull off, and impossible to do so without a job already lined up.
I graduated from college in 2009, when no one was hiring. Most of my high school friends chose to stay in the Bay Area and tech it out, achieving widely varying levels of success. One has bought a house, others are employees at Google, Craigslist and OpenTable. Others are flailing, some even adding to their student loan debt by going back to school, hoping for a better job that will simply allow them to continue to live in the area where they were born and raised. All but one of my high school friends have chosen to put off having kids for the foreseeable future. My graduating classmates and I are 32 years old this year.
I thought I’d never move back; but here I am, and I’m getting ready to leave again. I’m grateful for this precious time spent at home; I’ve been able to reconnect with my family in a way you can only do as an adult, after years away. It’s because of this, coupled with watching my grandparents age and pass on, that I’ve begun to see my parents in a new light. I now really understand that my parents will not be around forever, and I am grateful for this time spent with them while they still have their faculties.
A benefit to moving back was that I’ve also met the man with whom I’m hoping to spend the rest of my life. He’s the sailor (don’t worry, I’ve taken a few classes) and although this started out as his life’s dream, it’s now our life’s plan. +1 Commitment.
As this brief chapter of my life comes to a close, I tie up what loose ends I can. I scramble madly to finish recording my first-ever solo CD. I madly line up appointments, dental visits and travel vaccinations before my work benefits run out and doing so becomes much more expensive. And, I say goodbye to my grandfather for what turned out to be the last time. Life is long, but life is also short.
Now, tethered to my family only by their Netflix account, I prepare for several years of long-term travel. It is honest-to-goodness cheaper than living here in the Bay Area. What adventures await me? Stay tuned.
