Home, Sweat Home----I mean sweet. Sweet, that's what I mean.

I began something this morning that’s kind of freaking me out. I signed the papers that kicked off the short path to home ownership. Before my kids finish their summer break, I’ll have a mortgage. For the first time in my life I will own real estate. And it sort of feels like getting hit with the Grown Up stick right between the eyes.

I’ve had people congratulate me, but somehow I didn't feel like that’s what was fitting for me in this venture. Not that remorse would be more appropriate. It’s just that the first time one of my cousins said it, it took me very off guard. I had to think for a moment to finally decide that, yes, I guess most people welcome congratulations for this sort of thing. I hadn't really thought about it before that.

I’m glad I’m doing it, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say it is a bit intimidating. I’ve never had the American dream of home ownership. I didn’t purposely spurn the idea. The goal of home ownership has simply never even been on my radar. Ever. It’s something you do as a necessity, but I would have been just as content to rent for the rest of my life too.

We’re currently renting the house we’re living in from my parents, and that’s the house I’ll be buying and that’s who I’ll be buying it from. At least there won't be a move in all of this. We are where we'll be. We're dealing with a known commodity. My parents are getting ready for retirement and they want to kind of purge themselves of any entanglements so when they decide it’s time, they’ll be nothing hindering them from making that change. I am glad that I’ll be helping to lift that burden. I think if anything, that’s the part of all this that I’m most eager about.

Don’t get me wrong. This house has been a blessing. It’s had it’s quirks here and there----but it has bedrooms for my kids and a yard for them to play in and it’s in a good neighborhood where we’ve really enjoyed our neighbors. I really feel like this is the place where we were meant to be right now. My parents picked the house to help us get out the situation we were living in seven years ago---living in a small two bedroom low income apartment where the kids play area was a parking lot facing the back side of a strip mall. We got along pretty good with our neighbors, but things like the fact that they kept weapons such as baseball bats handy in their apartments to protect themselves from Ex-es was a bit disconcerting. My mom and dad knew that my family needed better.

Now I've only just gotten used to not putting an apartment number down when I wrote our address and suddenly I'm going to have to remember to check the "own" box on all the forms that life brings my way. I guess that'll be more in line with the jump in age demographic that I've had to get used to. I still want to go for that 25 to 32 box.

A Mortgage. It'll take some getting used to. It sent my head spinning when I bought my car and did the math only to discover that when it was paid it off, my daughter would be able to drive it. Now a 30 year home loan. Do the math there and I finish up paying this house off about the time I’m shopping for burial plots. I don’t know if I’m ready for that. But ready or not, here it comes.

I did have a little epiphany as I was signing form after form at the bank, though. You see, I’ve moved around quite a bit since I graduated high school. About every two years or so, we’d be in a new place. So when we moved into this house, for me it was just the next place. It was very practical, but I didn’t greet it with any emotional investment at the time. It was just a new location to hold my people for the now. Who knew where tomorrow might blow us.

But as I sat there, pen poised over the next signature line, I had a moment of clarity of what this funny blue house actually is to my kids. Even though my wife and I have been all over the place, this was the only home my little people had ever really “known”. I mean Robo and Kitten had lived in that little two bedroom apartment, and a one bedroom before that----and Kitten had lived with us in student housing while I was going through school---but it’s nothing that they really remember as home, I don’t believe. They were too young. But this is the place that will imprint on them as Home with a capital ‘H’.

It made me start to wonder. Will they remember the chipped paint, leaks, broken concrete and dirty carpets? Or will they think more about the parties, the wrestling and dancing in the living room, their art on the fridge and the bookshelf filled with bedtime stories? Will they remember that I had trouble keeping up with the lawn, or that it was a perfect place to play tag, catch fireflys and have a lemon aid stand? What ever they remember, this will be it.

So I signed away. I’ve never been much for owning a building, but as a place to make and hold those kind of memories, this would be a bargain at twice the price.