Dona E. Bowens

Lawd, my friends. This house hunt is more than a notion. (“More than a notion?” I’m not starting to sound like my mother but my grandmother. WTF? Anyway…) It’s not that it’s a seller’s market right now and the competition is fiercer than Mother’s Day at Nick Cannon’s house, it’s that everyone has an opinion about the type of house that’s right for me.

Here’s a description of the type of house that I know to be right for me. I love me an old home full of wood features. I’m talking about wood floors, of course, and built-in cabinets and if you could throw in a stained glass window or two…OMG, swoon! A colonial with a front porch and maybe some brick steps leading to that front porch, and while you’re at it, how about some trees? And I’m not talking about those puny trees that they plant in new McMansion developments after they’ve cut down the old growth trees to make room for the ghastly McMansion development. I want trees that were saplings during the Roosevelt administration—I’m talking about the first Roosevelt.

In short, if it ain’t 100 years old, let’s not waste everyone’s time.

Some say, “How about a ranch house? When you’re older you won’t want to do all those steps.” Hell! I don’t want to do all those steps now. But considering I’ve gained about 50lbs during my repatriation back to ‘Merica, I need to be climbing as many steps as possible on a daily basis. Besides, ranch homes are baby boomers wet dreams and ugly af. It’s like the Brady Bunch house is the epitome of architecture splendor…though the Brady Bunch house did have 2 levels…anyway, I hate ranches. Rectangular boxes without imagination. No thanks.

I’m kinda iffy on a cape, too. Cape houses aren’t even trying to disguise the fact that they’re boxes modeled on Monopoly houses. Might as well paint them all green, post a sign in the yard saying, “Do not pass ‘GO’,” and be done with it. Now, a Cape can be cutened up (I just made up that verb “cuten.” Like it?), but it’d take a whole lotta cutening to get my attention.

“Trees will ruin your roof and plumbing. You don’t want a lot of trees in your yard,” someone said. Au contraire ma tante! I want all the trees in my yard. Confession! I’m a secret tree hugger. I was watching one of those home remodeling shows once, in which just the type of problem mentioned by ma tante came up for the home owners. The home owner said, “Welp, we’ll just have to cut down the tree,” followed by a shrug of the shoulders. I shouted at my TV, “Leave the tree and move your clusterfuck of a house!”

It was a beautiful tree. Full, green and healthy but “Oh my roof!” and the 100+year-old tree is headed to the sawmill. I’m going to do whatever I got to do to make sure that trees can co-exist with my roof and plumbing.

Coworker mentioned that she really wished I could afford to live near her. This wasn’t a wisecrack about my house buying power, it was a confession on her part that she came out of her divorce with a chunk of change that allowed her to buy a split-level in a neighborhood barely within the city limits. I thought to myself that, even if I could afford it, I’d rather douche with Tabasco sauce than live in a neighborhood with unspoken lawn competitions and where blonde women can be seen walking golden retrievers at 11 in the morning on a Tuesday. Nope! Not for me.

Other friends, bless them, recommend I get out of the city all together and suggest this suburb or the other in all seriousness. They forget I’m Black and this is Ohio. I’m not trying to be the “first” on any block let alone a pioneer. I need to be at least 5 blocks from the nearest Trump sign, and sometimes that’s hard to do even in certain neighborhoods within the city limits. I need a barrio full of BLM signs, Love Is Love flags and a few neighbors who don’t even speak English. Hopefully they speak Spanish because, dios mio, I need someone to practice with.