I am 41 years old, and I have lived on my own - away from my parents’ home - since I was 17. During all those all those years,as I lived in lots of different dorms, apartments, and finally, houses, it was my my parents’ house and neighborhood that continued to feel more like home to me than any other place I inhabited. Everywhere else I alighted, including the suburban rancher I owned and lived in with my first husband for more than seven years felt strangely…temporary.
Don’t get me wrong, I had many wonderful times in that sweet 1950s rancher, and I grew to love several of my neighbors there very much. I cried the day I had to move out. And even some of the houses and apartments I inhabited for much briefer periods over the years were special to me in different ways. But none of them really felt like home in the same way my parents’ house and ‘hood did. I sometimes wondered whether there was something wrong with me – a lingering immaturity, perhaps, that made me unable to completely cut ties with my family of origin, even as I raised my own children.
But 2.5 years ago, my husband Jon and I bought our first house together, and from the first moment I walked in the door as a potential buyer, the place felt like it really could be my real, permanent home. Today, it simply is home. I feel as firmly rooted in this house as I once did in my parents’ abode.
This is the view out the front door of what became our house, taken the day we toured the house with our realtor for the first time.
This is a picture of our house taken several years before we moved in. Since we bought it, we’ve added a white picket fence, a new roof, landscaping, and lots of interior work. But this is pretty much what it looked like the first day I saw it. And it was love at first sight.
And despite the fact that my three older children had to do far too much moving around earlier in their childhoods, before we landed in the house where we live now, I hope very much that the house is beginning to feel like home to them, too. I want them to remember Christmases and summer nights on the porch and potluck suppers with friends and treeclimbing and playing in the hose – all in THIS house. Of course for their baby sister C., it is the only home she has ever known. And unless some unforeseen circumstance makes a move unavoidable, Jon and I plan to stay here until the children help pack our things for the old folks’ home.
I’ve wondered just what it is about this house that makes it different from the other places I’ve lived. I think part of the reason it feels more ”forever” is because my relationship with my husband feels truly permanent. This is our home – together – and we are a family that feels as solid to me as the one in which I grew up felt when I was a child. But it’s also because I love the neighborhood. It’s not for everyone, but we’ve chosen to settle down in a historic, inner city neighborhood, full of gorgeous Victorian and Craftsman houses. Some are fully restored, like these.
Our own house is only about halfway restored. We couldn’t have afforded it if it had been completely renovated; it will be years before we can do everything we want to do to it. So for now, we are living with barely functional kitchen and bathrooms. But in exchange for these less-than stellar features that we can’t yet afford to improve, we got 3700 square feet and five bedrooms for our big family, high ceilings, gorgeous woodwork and windows, and a wonderful fireplace in the living room. Having grown up in old houses myself, these are the things that make me viscerally comfortable. And did I mention that we have a creek? A real creek in our backyard? How many city houses can say that?
This is the official description of our house from the historic preservation experts who described it the year it was featured on the annual neighborhood home tour:
This 1910 Queen Anne Cottage is one and one-half stories with an irregular plan over a brick foundation. Its hip roof has lower cross gables, front and side hipped dormers, and an asphalt shingle covering. The house has one over one double hung windows and an interior end brick chimney. The front and side porches wrap around the house, and feature round fluted columns with Ionic capitals, a sawn wood balustrade and Queen Anne patterned transom and sidelights of stained glass at the front entry.
I like living very near downtown, and I like it that my teenager can actually take the bus when he needs to get somewhere. I like it that every house in our neighborhood – even the ones that could use some work – has a distinct look and personality. No cookie-cutter houses here. I like the small businesses that surround our house, and the fact that I can walk to them without fear of being mowed down by traffic. I love the big. mature trees that line our streets, and I love the annual Christmas tour, when the most beautiful houses in the neighborhood twinkle with lights for the thousands of visitors who come to take a look at them. I like the fact that most of my neighbors have also purposely chosen this funky, unique community, and the rest have been here for decades, providing an eclectic, friendly, and never-dull mix of great friends all around. I love it that my sister and her family live only a few miles away, and Jon’s parents live even closer – in the house in which Jon grew up.
Charlotte enjoys our front porch.
Jane and cousin Eleanor dance in the front hall.
Jane, Henry and Elliot enjoy a summer evening on the front porch.
Elliot helps Jon strip one-hundred years of wallpaper in one of the bedrooms
Jay teaches Henry chords in the living room.
The view from one of the upstairs windows right after we had the backyard fenced last spring.
There are challenges to living in our urban community. Many houses in the ‘hood are still more “transitional” in their appearance (READ: pitbulls, collapsing front porches, and chainlink fences), and the neighborhood does have issues with sketchy transients from the nearby mission district. But we also have real sidewalks for walking, and beautiful greenways and parks snaking through the entire neighborhood.
This is one stretch of the lovely greenway that runs through our neighborhood, including right behind our backyard. It’s a park that many suburban neighborhoods would kill for, but I think a lot of people have no idea it exists right here in the middle of the city.
Yes, a walk through the park still too often involves stepping over a drunk guy sprawled across the path, but we’ve decided to stake our claim here, and work to make the neighborhood we love better, instead of opting out of it altogether. The very, very active neighborhood association is full of other people who feel the same way, and those who have been here a lot longer than we have say we have no idea how far the neighborhood has come already.
So yes, this is home now. Having finally put down roots somewhere feels wonderful (even when I silently curse the terrible condition of our rickety, ugly kitchen, or complain about the homeless guy urinating in the creek out back). I know many of my friends who live in houses with fully functional bathrooms in neighborhoods full of neatly manicured lawns can’t imagine living here, but all I can tell them is that I can’t imagine living anywhere else! And I think that’s a pretty good litmus test for whether you are where you are supposed to be.
Now that I have given this matter some thought for myself, I am curious to hear from blog readers about what feels like home to you. Is it your current house? Is it your parents’ house? What defines the right living environment for you to feel most comfortable raising your own family? Do you have a dream neighborhood in mind, but you haven’t managed to get there yet?
Tell me in the comments below.
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I love my condo in Park Place Condominiums in E. Knox, but, when I first moved in, for several months, I refered to my unit as Bette’s condo (the former owner). I initially felt a little uncomfortable in such nice digs, but the place is MINE now and I love it. It’s a true reflection of me (except for the hideous wallpaper in the master bedroom.) I lucked out being on the 2nd floor and on a hallway with an extended family (in 2 units) for neighbors. I love the grounds, mature trees, the ballpark our yard backs up to, the courtyard and the swimming pool. We are a gated community with heavy common doors. I feel pretty safe (I don’t have a door facing the street.) I like the close proximity of living close to downtown w/o paying downtown prices:) This is a historic and very unique building. Each unit is different. I love my 9 foot windows. After 3 years, the place still feels special to me, even when I’m driving up to the gate. I am very fortunate.
Either I don’t know what that feeling feels like, or I’ve yet to experience it.
I’ve always been pretty detached from things like that. Here’s what I think is to blame. When I was 16 (or maybe 17 but no more than 18), my father owned a small used car lot so I was always driving some random piece of shit car. Then he gave my this adorable little silver Pinto (man I’m dating myself) that I fell in love with. One day he needed to drive it to work so I walked to school. When I got home that day, he’d sold my car. Never asked me, informed me, nothin. Now, over 20 years later it still pisses me off when I think about it. I think that after that happened, I just learned to not get attached to stuff like that because it hurt too much when it was taken away.
I do remember this one historic apartment that I lived in when I was in Memphis. It was very cool. But, usually about 6 months after I move, I can’t even remember what it was like to live in the previous place. My parents house now is not the house I grew up in so when I go there, it just feels like my parents house.
ps – awesome digs! man i wish i had an old big house like that to fix up!
I live in a suburban ’60s bungalow, which I like because we’ve made it our own and the neighborhood is great. But I must say, the description of your house sounds exactly like my wildest dream…
Your backyard looks incredible & the house is very, very cute.
I like my house (little bungalow in a great old neighborhood in the city), but I think I am now in love with your house. A creek! A picket fence! Wraparound porches! I bet you even have a lovely window seat perfect for mid-afternoon reading.
Our house IS awesome, but I really do need to add a photo or two of the terrible kitchen and baths before anybody starts thinking it’s THAT great
-Katie
We lived in a house in the Tree Streets in Johnson City before we moved to Knoxville. It was built in the 20′s and had giant rooms, hardwood floors, beautiful woodwork, and a crummy kitchen. The neighborhood was a mix of beautifully restored homes, pretty-well-kept-up homes (like ours), junky homes and fraternity houses (why are fraternity houses always in gorgeous old homes?). It had lots of mature trees and sidewalks everywhere. That house made me want to write a novel from the point of view of the house, about all the families that had lived in it over nearly 100 years. (I am not a writer of any kind, in fact I am a veterinarian:) I still miss that house.
We used to live in an 100+ year old home in Old North Knoxville. I loved that little home(loved the rent too-$310 a month)! Alas, we currently live in a suburban tract home. I like my neighborhood and we are within walking distance to the grocery store etc…, but the house makes me feel a bit blah. Your home even with the kitchen and bath remodels needed would probably be over $300,000 out here. I am stuck daydreaming about someday moving back to Knoxville or making a truck load of money and buying my dream victorian out here. Since I truly feel “at home” in my town now, I am working on the truck load of money.:)
I keep selling my homes. We restored a 1910 brick Victorian and sold it so we could take this trip of a lifetime. I have no address. Right now I’m in the Auckland Airport, the closest to home I have at the moment. I don’t know where to send my mail. I sold everything I won including my grandmother’s piano. She wouldn’t have wanted it to be an albatross around my neck. I feel disjointed yet free. I long for that place that feels like home. My frinds in Colorado make me feel at home, because I have known them for ages now, but I lust for an old farmhouse in the south where the growing season is more than 2 months long and where the girls can have horses. But it would only work if I could bring my friends from Colorado with me, and if my allergies weren’t a problem, and if I could integrate back into that old racial problem thing, and….
I used to live in a fabulous old house in Fourth and Gill. I moved almost a year ago. I miss it so much, sometimes I get sick to my stomach. I loved my neighbors, my walks and bike rides in the neighborhood, I just loved it all. I love the spirit of the hood. I truly felt community there. However, things changed, my boyfriend and I broke up, we sold the house, and I moved back to Nashville. My 3 years in the house on Deery Street felt more like home than any other place I have lived. I will never forget that feeling.
My perspective is totally different, being European and from a very old city in Southern Europe. In the city centre we live in apartments, and the parks are in the outskirts, with a couple of exceptions in the city centre. I grew up in two different apartments, fairly old and spacious, but no backyard or frontyard, just a lot of driving to the parks and beaches around the city on the weekends or to our country cottage on the school holidays. So, several years later, married and still with no kids, when my husband and I moved to this neighbourhood, 9 years ago, just across from one of those city parks, it felt like heaven. My kids (8, 6 and 3) are spending their childhood in a neighbourhood where they walk to school, walk to swimming pool, cross the street to the great park and walk to most of their friends’. Although we still live in an apartment, it is the closest we’ll get to having outdoor space. And I guess most old cities in southern Europe are the same.
Your American concept of neighbourhoods (both urban and suburban)with houses and porches and back and front yards, great lawns, no sidewalks (though yours has one) are totally alien to us.
Marta from Lisbon
Rootedness and a sense of place are pretty much central to my nature so I tend to become attached to wherever I live very quickly. I hate to move. I even cried upon leaving dorm rooms. My parents got divorced while I was in college so my childhood home no longer exists. My mother does live in my grandmother’s old house now, but of course it is changed; still, that is the only place left from my childhood. Maybe that’s why I’ve quickly felt that my own digs were my real home, even when we were living in apartments.
I’m living in my dream house (120-year-old Victorian Queen Anne, within walking distance from Katie but not, alas, in her hip, up-and-coming ‘hood) but dreams and reality don’t always match, do they? Our house is big, beautiful, and well-built, and could be amazing with the right treatment, but we are not handy. We aren’t gentrifying, we just live here, in a house big enough for seven (with a falling down front porch!!) that we could afford to buy. I love the sense of history. I wish we had more yard, although what we have is good for this neighborhood. I love being within walking distance of just about everything I need. And believe it or not, for the most part I am glad to live in an area where I can never forget “the least of these” because they are my neighbors, or shop–or beg outside–the stores I frequent.
Marta – I could be very, very happy in an apartment near parks in a historic European city. That sounds wonderful! Actuallym if we didn’t have kids, I’d love to live with no yard and instead just enjoy public greenspace that we don’t have to care for.
Leslie, I agree that it’s a good thing to live in proximity to people with less. It makes me aware on a daily basis of how lucky we are, and how much work we as a society have to do to fight poverty. When I lived in the 37919 zip code, we were surrounded by poeple with nicer houses and cars and lots more money. It made me feel poor, even though i was actually really blessed! And I love your street. I think that whole little neighborhood is going to get hip and gentrified very soon as more people discover it, and then your wonderful house will soar in value
Katie
Katie,
I hope you are right about our neighborhood–it’s what I keep telling John, anyway! As for how you felt living in 37919, that’s how our kids feel at school in 37923! ;-p
I’m a New York city dweller on a Central Park Block.
Same rent stabilized apartment for 25 years.
No architectural charm, but I love having a doorman and the building staff!
My apartment has a lovely terrace, I’m on the 20th floor with views of the Hudson River from the terrace and Central Park from the bedrooms. Central park is my backyard, and i use it everyday.
This is HOME!
Katie,
What a great write up! I visited your other house once in OLPNA with a mutual friend, and while it was nice, your REAL HOME is fantastic! I currently still reside in the OLPNA myself…the neighborhood feels like home, the house not so much (I actually have another house in OLPNA as a rental and i miss it–had more charm). But I always have mixed feelings because it IS a neighborhood in transition, and the St Mary’s issue will weigh heavily on my decision to stay or go. Reading your blog makes me remember why we chose North Knoxville to begin with, the love of the city and history. Perhaps when I’m feeling jaded about my curent dwellings and neighborhood, I’ll come read your blogs lol
I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don’t know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
Sharon
http://www.autoloans101.info
Katie, I’m just now getting around to reading your thoughts about living in an old house. I’m your neighbor in the”hood” and I have wanted to live here since I first went on the Home Tour in ’92. I made it in ’95 and I can’t imagine living anywhere else. I love the fact that it feels like I’m living in the country because of all the trees but we have the advantage of city living. I feel like I belong because of all the great neighbors and the comunity spirit we all share. It’s a contentment and pleasure that is just about perfect!