Visiting Old Addresses

If people had followed me around for the past sixty-five years buying and selling real estate and done exactly the opposite, they'd be multi-millionaires today. Every decision made was the wrong one. I bought high and sold low or moved when I should have stayed. It takes a special skill to have lived here since 1954 and not made a nickel on my six houses.

For my birthday, with my daughters Janice and Lauren, we visited three of those houses. One might say it was like returning to a crime scene but I would never say such a thing. More of a mnemonic recollected in tranquility as each tree, door or window became a breadcrumb in the thrill-a-minute chronicle of my life. I couldn’t help wondering if I had purchased one house instead of the other that my trajectory would have taken me in some other direction. Perhaps I wouldn’t have lived this lucky life so I’m happy to have traveled my path with no pot of gold to show for it.

For my daughters it was of course a far different experience. They now see with sixty-year-old eyes what they had lived with child wonder. What seemed very large was, in fact, quite small. Space had been rearranged. Saplings, now full grown. One could barely hug its circumference. Neighborhoods are no longer recognizable except for one or two landmarks. The first McDonald’s in the San Fernando Valley is still where we left it around Victory Blvd. and Coldwater Canyon. Such historical sites might be a telling artifact in some future archeological dig.

No doubt, their childhood memories are embedded in those rooms and alleys, under trees and patches of grass. Discoveries along with traumas. Hearts crushed and small epiphanies. What once seemed a major turning point might now barely register. We noted the pre-school where I would drop Lauren off on my way to work and where a school bus picked up Janice. The garage converted to a den and a patio disappeared.

I was not the most popular guy on the block. My bumper stickers got me in trouble with neighbors when I blew my cover advocating fair housing and school integration. Somehow, I escaped without having a cross burning on my front lawn.

In another instance I didn’t fare well because the previous owner had invited everyone to swim in the heated pool. It turned out he had diverted the electrical wiring so it bypassed the meter.  All this drama in sleepy suburbia while a controversy of crows cackled on the roof antenna.

By far, the most important address of my life is the roof over my head I’ve been renting for the past thirty-seven years. Thank you, God, for rent control, one of your best ideas since parting that metaphorical sea. Show me another and I just may… never mind. This apartment is my greatest asset, a miracle, which almost makes up for all those lost properties. 

Many years ago a dear friend who was also a psychiatrist said I didn’t love money enough. One doesn’t argue with that observation especially since he was a Jungian; I could turn into an archetype.

I try to give money its importance ranking it high just behind emotional needs and health. Some things are important and some things are more important.