I can’t afford you anymore: A letter to the place where I wasborn
Igrew up in the comfortable community of Lexington, and you know I grew up there because I say “comfortable” when I really mean “rich.” It wasn’t as rich as it is now, but still we were better off than, say, Arlington. These days, if someone tells me they live in Arlington, I assume they’re a VP at Amazon or a defenseman for the Bruins or a Qatari prince.
I, too, used to be comfortable, but I made a series of decisions that ensured discomfort.
The first decision was moving out of my parents’ house. If you live in New England, you cannot afford to move out of your parents’ house, and you know this, but you do it anyway because the world tells you it’s necessary, especially if you are a man who is hoping to find a mate. So you move to Somerville where you live with three strangers and two parking spots and one moldy basement. Women find this attractive.
The second financial affliction was marrying an architect. Beyond their expensive tastes and student loans, these people are constantly in debt to various trade cults like the AIA or the BSA or the IRS. They are also dreamers, which I love, but which is also expensive. We had a fully designed vacation home before we had a home home.
The third punch to the money gut was my going to journalism school and then actually getting a job in journalism. A master’s degree in journalism costs as much as a Land Rover and is worth about as much as a chicken sandwich to a hiring person. If you’re interested in hard work and low pay, you too can be a journalist. Or an architect.
The fourth stop on the path to financial ruin — I mean discomfort — was buying and renovating a home, specifically in this day and age and state and city.
We finally did it, I thought, marching, sledgehammer in hand, into our Roslindale house with its demolished kitchen. Its dining room wall sitting in the middle of our living room. Its toilet-less, shower-less, bath-less bathroom. Its yellow McDonald’s paper coffee cup that served as our new temporary bathroom. Its lead paint that was surely somewhere, plotting.
We made it, America — we are homeowners in this economy. If you can buy a home here, you can buy a home anywhere. Except Newton or Needham or Brookline. Or Winchester or Arlington, and definitely not Lexington. And not Cape Cod. OK, here’s what you do: Look west of Worcester and east of the Berkshires and north of Canada and there’s a cozy colonial that needs “a little love and also indoor plumbing” with your name on it.
The fifth hole in our bank account was having a child, and the sixth was having another child.
Despite my wife catching the baby and my cutting the cord — seems like we did most of the work — it turns out hospitals will charge you handsomely . . . to give birth in hospitals.
What the hell do we have insurance for? I wondered aloud every time I saw the bill. I pleaded with my wife to labor and deliver on our lead-dusted living room floor, surrounded by huge cast iron plumbing pipes. “You can still catch the baby, and I can still cut the cord.” Fancy lady that she is, we went to the hospital.
The seventh P of financial problem-things was losing that journalism job, and the eighth straw that broke our bank was my having an emergency appendectomy.
I can’t afford this emergency right now, I thought — I
don’t have a job! The alternative was to simply pass away, which would solve some money problems but create others, so I got the surgery.
We are now squarely in the realm of uncomfortable. So we get creative. We unsubscribe from all the streaming services; we turn the thermostat down and pump insulation into our old house to save on heating; we sell my wife’s car; we bust up our neighbors’ fence for firewood and sell their car, too. Just kidding — they have an SUV.
Spending hacks aside, I was born here, I grew up here. My mother’s family traces its roots back to the Mayflower. My dad’s family is full of proud Irish and Italian immigrants who settled in Newton and Everett, yet here we are, so many years and generations later, trying to figure out how to stay and wondering if it’s worth it.