essay

How I Lost a Mansion and Found a Life

I wanted a big house. With a big yard. Those were my qualifications when my husband and I moved from Los Angeles to the outer-reaching suburbs of Atlanta. Unable to afford a house in California on teachers' salaries, we were excited to buy a five-bedroom, three-story house with a basement, a screened-in porch, a two-car garage and a boathouse on an acre lot. All for the same monthly price as our two-bedroom rented cottage in Glendale.

To understand what this really meant to me, you have to know that I was raised by a single mom. We lived with my grandparents. We lived in a trailer. We lived in a split-level house we shared with a woman who hung Elvis rugs in every room. But we never lived in a house that was all our own. And we definitely never had one of those expensive refrigerators with an ice dispenser or any need for a garage door opener.

I also wanted a safer place to start a family. City-living had brought too many adventures. One morning I'd discovered two cops with sawed-off shotguns standing in our front yard. A few weeks later we learned that the corner house was a mental institution when a patient ran through our backyard with a knife. There was also the incident with the heroin junkie who was stealing jewelry.

And then there were our neighbors. We shared a backyard with a 50-year old Sophia Loren impersonator. She liked to do yard work in full makeup with a wig, glasses and painted-on mole. Our other neighbors lived in a government-subsidized apartment with three kids that ran the water hose all day and played in the unhygienic mud bath that used to be the front yard.

So, we loaded up all our belongings and headed to the promised land of good schools and mall shopping. Our neighbors would have well manicured lawns, and they wouldn't do yard work in costume. There was a library nearby without homeless people taking naps in the quiet room, and the store fronts weren't marred with excessive graffiti.

We fantasized about what kind of boat we could get for the boathouse: a pontoon boat, a sailboat, or more realistically, a canoe. We made plans for our secluded deck. We talked about getting an intercom so that my husband could work in his basement workshop, and I could page him from the third-floor laundry room.

After we unloaded all our belongings into the spacious cavern that was our new home, we could still hear an echo. We didn't have nearly enough furniture. We borrowed $8,000 from my mother-in-law, which still left the basement and the baby room completely empty. Even though we didn't have the baby yet, we had already named the room.

All our neighbors had kids, sported Bush/Cheney stickers on their cars, and wanted to know where we went to church. Somehow, it had escaped me that we had moved from one of the most liberal cities in the nation to the Bible Belt. It didn't really bother me, except that we seemed to be excluded from the biggest social network in town. People half-jokingly referred to us as "those California liberals," even though I'd never thought of myself as political. But I didn't go to church and I'd voted for Clinton. And I'd moved from California. So there it was.

When fall arrived, I was ecstatic to buy a rake. Jumping in leaf piles had been one of my favorite childhood activities, but I'd never lived on an acre. After three hours of manual labor, blisters included, I had nothing to show for my work. It took three leaf blowers and almost the entire fall to clear all the leaves.

My husband's Luddite father was one of our first visitors.

"Isn't this house a little big for you?" he asked.

"We love it," my husband said. But there was a hint of uncertainty in his voice.

Then came the repairs. We needed new siding and a new paint job. Since the house was three stories, we had to hire men with what looked like circus equipment to do the job. Cost: $15,000. A few months later, the main water line broke in our basement while we were on vacation. The water bill was $2,000 and finishing the basement cost another $7,000. For six months, we spent every free evening dry-walling, mudding and tiling. My back hurt, my knees ached and I was too busy crying and grouting to enjoy our leaf-free backyard.

At least we didn't need to buy an intercom. Our walls were paper-thin. I didn't have to walk down three flights of stairs to tell my husband his mother was on the phone. I'd never noticed that our L.A. cottage had three-inch thick plaster walls.

And then I got pregnant. It was planned, but instead of feeling overjoyed, I felt confused. Was this it? Was this life what I really wanted? Would I spend all my free time with a shovel and a tile saw? I kind of missed my crazy neighbors. I missed being close to the city. But we were living the dream, weren't we?

The answer became clear after I had a miscarriage. There I was, in a big suburban house with a baby room and no baby. I cried for a month. And then I understood. This wasn't working.

Our house sold in two weeks. The new owners fell in love with the same things we had: the big yard, the big house. They even bought the refrigerator, the one with the ice-maker. We packed our things again, which took a lot longer this time, and moved into a 1950s bungalow that was one-third the size of our dream mansion and five minutes from Atlanta. Instead of having four bathrooms we now share one and it doesn't have a double vanity or a sunken tub. But the walls are made of plaster and the house doesn't shake when I turn on the washing machine. In fact, we just bought an intercom because we can't hear each other from one end of the house to the other.

We still work in the suburbs and our coworkers look at us like we're crazy for moving to the city. One of them said, "Oh, well you don't have kids, so I'm sure that's fun for you." It is fun: the yoga studio, the art house movie theater, the farmer's market.

I know my co-worker thought that we should be settling down. We are. We're just not settling. We've found happiness near a large lesbian community with neighbors who paint graffiti art in their spare time. I'm excited that our kids, if we are able to have them, will be exposed to people who aren't like them, no matter who they turn out to be. And they'll have parents who will encourage them to follow their bliss, whether it leads them to a suburban mansion in the Bible Belt or a shack with a celebrity impersonator taking a mud bath in what used to be the front yard.

Holly Day lives in Decatur, Georgia. She teaches 12th grade literature and journalism in the Atlanta suburbs. She has also worked on The Drew Carey Show and associate produced several documentary films for The Discovery Channel.

~Holly Day