Deciding Between the City and Suburbs
July 14, 2010, By Ron Mattocks 2 comments
This arrangement lasted until recently when, in preparation for my sons spending the summer with us, we moved again, this time into four-bedroom rental house … smack dab in the middle of the very suburbia I was never supposed to be a part of. Worse still, it’s not even an interesting house but rather a monument to the architectural oddities of the 1970’s with offset rooflines that highlight ill-placed windows and disproportionate room layouts that defy common sense. In the day, I’m sure the original owners thought the place hip; today it could serve as the backdrop for a Brady Bunch movie.
True, it does meet our physical requirements, but it also suffers from a host of problems one might expect from a 30-year-old house that’s seen little upkeep particularly in the past decade. The air filters are coated with an inch thick layer of dust and hair; the master bath towel rack fell off the wall of its own volition; and the kitchen sink’s metal piping disintegrated after I tried to fix the leak that had wrinkled up the cabinet base under it. There are a handful of switches that turn on God only knows what, and there are no lights whatsoever in the main living room. It doesn’t help that my prior job experience causes me to hone into the litany of quality and design shortcomings, further irritating me.
Yet for all of these annoyances, I forget what living in an actual house means to my wife—stability. I’m reminded of this as I carry in another of her boxes and slice through the multiple layers of overlapping tape, each of which represents one of her many moves the way rings in a stump indicate a tree’s age. As a child, she must have lived in two dozen places spanning Oklahoma, California and Texas, a trend that continued into her marriage, divorce and eventual struggles as a single mother.
While we unpack, I watch as she rediscovers her vaguely remembered possessions and family heirlooms wrapped like mummies in old newspaper that’s been yellowed by the years spent in storage with no place to go until now. The way she hums and dances from room to room as she puts her things away makes me believe she and the squirrels scampering in our yard have been performing a musical number together ala a Disney princess when I’m not around. Even though I tease my wife about her idyllic notions of trimmed hedges and back-yard cook outs, I know why she believes in such things.
This is what went through my mind a few days later as I paused to hurl a screwdriver out of the frustration caused by my unsuccessful attempts to reattach an awkwardly positioned light fixture in the pantry. When that wasn’t enough to restrain my impulse, I thought of the way my stepdaughters squealed at the site of their first fully decorated bedroom. Still raising my throwing arm, I then heard my son’s voice from the night before when he said, “Thanks, Dad, for moving just for us.”
That’s when I realized where I was actually meant to be, and it had nothing to do with location. And I laid the screwdriver down.
Ron Mattocks is a father of five in Houston, Texas and the author of the book Sugar Milk: What One Dad Drinks When He Can’t Afford Vodka. He is a featured contributor to ManoftheHouse.com.
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