Transience

There’s a house on the corner of Wilson and Malden that I’m absolutely in love with. It’s one of those little things I’m really going to miss about Chicago. I walk past it everyday on my way home from the El, and I always gaze longingly at it. It doesn’t really belong there. It’s like a home picked up from a different time and a large plot of land, and plopped down on a dingy corner in Uptown Chicago. It’s blue and huge with a beautiful, white porch out front. The yard is a mess (it floods every time it rains, or the snow melts), there are random ropes hanging about out front (I don’t know if someone is in the middle of working on something or what) and there’s a clashing Chicago Bears blanket hanging in a window where lace curtains would be more appropriate. But the home itself is inviting and old-fashioned. It’s exactly the kind of home I want to live in someday.

It stands in stark contrast to the dinginess of Wilson. It’s even a standout against the brown and tan stone-fronts of many of the condos/apartments in this area. Something about this fact adds to its appeal. It’s a real home, and I think that I’m drawn to that right now, when everything in my life is apt to change completely from this month to the next.

Of course, so much about city life seems a bit unstable and transitory to me. When I drive up Lake Shore Drive, I see high-rises with floor after floor of apartments lining the road. When I look around my neighborhood, I see condos stacked upon condos. It’s the nature of a city filled with over three million people that you’ve got people living on top of people, reaching further and further up into the sky. The volumes and variety of people are part of what makes the city exciting, especially when you are young and single. All these apartments and condos however, just scream transience--paying month to month on a place that won’t be yours in a year, or two, or five. But then in the midst of all these temporary homes there’s this huge old house with this beautiful, rocking-chair and tea-sipping porch. While all these other places seem like temporary shells, it screams stability. At least it does to me.

I think we’re all searching for stability and permanence right now. In this recession, so many Americans are watching their lives turn upside-down, losing the homes and the stability they once knew. As a matter of fact, if the “For Sale” sign hanging on the gate of my cobalt-blue Victorian is any indication, the owners of my favorite Uptown house may be searching for the same thing, too. I consider myself lucky never to have had that stability only to have it ripped out from under me.

I have been moving from place to place fairly regularly for the past four years—my address has changed four times (soon to be five). You’d think I’d have grown used to bouncing about by now. I’m trying to believe that I can make any place my home, but I’m still craving a place of my own. At the rate I’m going, the next few years won’t find me settled anyplace, and I’m starting to accept that it’s not just my life—ours is a society of constant transition. With cell phones we are accessible anywhere, and our family members and friends are accessible, too. We don’t have to be at our desks to receive email, or surf the web. We can constantly move and stay in touch all at once. So, the home is no longer the “home base” it once was. Call me old-fashioned (you wouldn’t be entirely off-base), but part of me is resistant to this. I’m glad for connectivity and mobility. After all, my best friends live in D.C., Pittsburgh, Phoenix, San Francisco and Knoxville—what would I do without my cell, e-mail, and facebook to keep in touch with them? Yet, I feel like I have pieces of myself all over the place.

I wonder if it’s the state of the nation that makes me long to put down roots, or if I’m just getting to the age where I’m ready to settle down, or if I’m just tired of not knowing where I’ll be in a few months, or a combination of all of these. Regardless, I would love to live somewhere long enough to make a place mine, to hang pictures on the wall without a predetermined date when I’ll be stripping them down and to create a strong base of friends that I don't have to hug good-bye at the end of two years or six months.

I know that adaptability is a rather vital life skill, and even I have become pretty good at mastering it. Sometimes, however, I wish I could just draw up a rocking chair on that big white porch, sip tea and gossip with my friends, long into the night.