I
S H A H I N T A K E S O F F
114
Want to signup for free e-mail notificationof
Jim’s columnor to seepast columns?Go to
AMERICANWAY
OCTOBER 1 2008
ILLUSTRATIONBYAMANDADUFFY
There was the one in Columbia Heights
with the burgundy walls and the gleaming
hardwood staircase and the special sound-
system wiring. Just a tad too pricey. There
was the one in the “flower streets” that had
thosemassivedark-woodwindow framesyou
seeonly inmovies. Too far fromasubway line.
There was the one with character seeping
out of its drafty windows, the stately dowa-
ger right on Lincoln Park. Alas, toomuch the
fixer-upper.
They, and many others, are ghosts of
house-hunts past. They haunt our decision
making aswe happen by one of them on our
way todinner or amovie.
“Oh, remember that one?” one of us says.
“Yeah,” the other says, exhaling ruefully.
We’re about to get some new ghosts. For
we are, again, looking at houses.
Thiswill be the fourthmove in eight years.
That’s not a record, certainly. But it’s more
moving thanmost folkswhoaren’tmilitaryor
relocating for a jobor stayingone stepahead
of the lawdo.
“Practice makes perfect,” Jessica says to
me one afternoon as we follow an itinerary
ofmilitary precision that she’s assembled for
viewing open houses.
I grumble.
Theday isscorching, ourcar’saircondition-
er isbroken,my shirt is sticking to thebackof
the seat, and everything is too expensive.
They say it is abuyer’smarket. Not here in
Washington, D.C., it’s not. Here in theDistrict,
house prices just aren’t going up as fast as
they once did. But they haven’t gone down.
We troop through houses with wavy
floors, tiny kitchens, bath-
rooms without doors. We
go to one house, about 100
years old, that has a win-
dow air-conditioning unit
in its master bedroom.
This, despite the fact
—and Idomean fact,
because I read the
sheet and double-
checked with the
agent — that the
place has central air. Oh, it is also the place
with the doorless bathroom. And the tiny
kitchen. And thewavyfloors.
“I love this place,” I say as we walk
around.
I love itshighceilings, its longwindows, its
richwood trim.
It is thefirst of our newghosts.
Over aweekend of searching, we came to
like the house with the high ceilings, hard-
woodfloors, and longwindows. The question
was whether we liked it enough to make an
offer.
“I’m in no hurry,” I said.
It was an odd thing for me to say, since
I was the onewho had championed the pur-
chase in the first place. While Jessica liked
the house, I was crazy about it. Now, here I
was, backing away.
And that is when she said it: “I would
just ask you to remember the ones that got
away.”
It’s true. I should remember. Because re-
membering lets us dream.
Buying a house isn’t about buying a house.
It is about buying a mess of problems you
can’t seedisguisedbeneathwhat youwant to
see. Which is to say, buying a house is about
who you think you are.
We think we are cool. We think we go to
the theater and walk to the market and buy
vegetables everyday.We thinkwe live some-
body else’s life, abeautiful-people life.
The problem is, we’re not cool. We go to
themovies and drive to the supermarket and
buyboxesof dried spaghetti.We liveour own
life, an ordinary-people life.
House hunting is nothing if not dreaming.
The purchase of the house, that’s the reality.
Jessica isn’t saying thatwe shouldbuy this
house. She is saying that I should consider
what I want, what we want, who we like to
thinkwe are. And thenbuy something else.
Metaphoricallyspeaking, Iamon thefloor,
looking up.
MovingRightAlong
By JimShahin
“I WOULD JUST
ask you to remember …”
Jessicabegins.
I lovewhen she talks like that.
It is so congressional-hearing. So gazing-
over-rimless-rectangular-glasses-perched-
low-on-the-nose.Sothere-should-be-a-comma-
followed-by-the-word-senator.
Iwould just ask you to remember.
BecauseJessicaworks for the federal gov-
ernment, her occasional lapse into bureau-
cratese is, I suppose, unsurprising. But while
I get a kick out of it, the governmentspeak
alone isn’twhat causesme such delight. It is
also how her use of it dovetails so perfectly
withher natural tendency to cloak hermean-
ing while simultaneously making her agenda
clear. A linguistic-judomaster, she has away
of using the attacker’s verbal weight against
him. He thinkshe’s trappedher. Suddenly, he’s
on the floor, looking up and wondering how
that happened.
He, by theway, wouldbeme.
“You would just ask me to remember?” I
repeat herwords, gentlymocking the phrase
while also luxuriating in it.
“Yes,” she responds, heedless to my sport
as she brushes her hair at themirror one last
time beforework. “We constantly talk about
the ones that got away.”
She’s right, of course.We do.
