It’s small. It’s on mortgage. I started paying for it in 2017 when my husband and I returned to the city from a failed life and hospitality career at the beach (he’s a chef). At that time, I was the one with a career to return to (as a tenured professor), so it was on me to lay down the first payments for a home of our own.
I didn’t want to rent. We’d been renting around since we married. And I loved the small but breezy condo unit the first time we saw it. We’d seen several properties for sale, and had lived in more as renters. This one had a pull I couldn’t explain. I was quiet about it while my husband and I were first getting a feel of the place. Then he told the agent, without knowing what I was thinking, “This is it.”
We felt the same thing, he didn’t even have to ask me. We vibed with the place, and in it with each other.
We still have 10 or so years to pay it all off, supposing that we can fund it for that long. The thought of giving it up depresses me. It is a possibility — I quit my job a year ago, and the new restaurant my husband had set up is not yet earning enough. It’s been a year without my paycheck, a year of constantly worrying where to get the money to pay for the house. I quit my job to care for our little son, who I was carrying in the womb when we moved in. Years later, we find out he’s autistic.
