Home Sweet Home. Is It a Fading American Dream?

“The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.”    --Maya Angelou, poet

It was home sweet home.

Not the biggest of homes or filled with fancy high tech appliances or a two-car garage or even a dishwasher. Us four kids were the dishwasher. That house didn’t have a finished basement, or a sprawling backyard. The space between our house and the Crifo family homestead next door put us nearly next door to their door. As in 25 feet or so of separation.

It was a Cape. Pretty basic shelter. That’s where my family lived in our early years, back in the nineteen sixties. The home was maybe 1,300 square feet or so, if that much. Center staircase. Modest size kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, and dining room on the first floor. Two bedrooms and a bathroom on the second. In their spare time, my dad and grandfather put up plywood paneling floor to ceiling, to make a family room, in the basement.

Home sweet home. Home sweet “starter home” too.

That’s the quaint term used to describe a style of house that once was very common in the United States. A home of limited size, nothing fancy. Just enough space for a growing family, and just the right price too. Perfect for young people or first-time home buyers or blue-collar folk or veterans returning from war or retirees downsizing or people of modest means. 

There was a time when to buy and own your own home, maybe a starter home, was central to the American dream. It was within reach of most people too. Once the supply of starter homes was plentiful. Zoning rules and land costs still made it possible to put up a Cape on a half-acre lot.

But not so much anymore.

Not after the rocket like rise in home prices that has marked the past few years, years when in the United States the average price for a home rose from $391,000 in 2020 to $453,000 by the end of 2021, an increase of 16 percent in one year. This year home prices are up by another 15 percent.

In the greater Boston area where I live, the average home now costs $900,000.  To afford that your household needs an income of at least $135,000, and that’s after a twenty percent down payment. Even out towards western Massachusetts and beyond, the median home price in the Bay State is a whopping $625,000.

And not a starter home to be found.

Not when buildable land is scarce, and a buildable lot is so expensive. Not when a town like the one I call home, has set of zoning regulations that clocks in at 109 pages. Not when, as in most Boston suburbs, you have to have a big lot for one house, and you can’t build on a mother-in-law apartment, and you have to be set back very far from the neighbors and you’re not allowed to subdivide your land and build clustered housing and so on and so on.

I’ll confess I embody the challenge of housing, its growing inequity. I live in a four-bedroom two car garage house, all by myself. (I’m not the owner.) I mean I absolutely love it. It’s my home, at least for now, where I find shelter from the storm of life on some days. Where I host loved ones around the dining room table. It contains all my stuff. I have lived in this home longer than any other place in my six plus decades of life.  It is home sweet home.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all Americans, all humans, had access to affordable housing, to places where they could live in safety and serenity with their loved one? Places that were within economic reach. Wouldn’t it be great if we could again build starter homes for anyone who wanted a home?   

A beautiful bungalow. A diminutive Cape.  A regular sized ranch. A simple split level.  

The average size of an American home has increased since from 1,300 square feet in 1960 to 2,200 square feet in 2019. In that same time the average number of residents has decreased from 3.6 people per household to a little more than two people per household.  

WHAT?!

To have a place to call home, and to call it all your own is a human dream for many.  From the moment God created the first humans in their first home, a garden, we have always longed for home. Home, both metaphorically and spiritually and physically too. A real dwelling place.  With a little space for living and a little green for growing.

Is that too much to ask? Right now, in much of the United States, yes. Can we change zoning laws, subsidize home costs, or offer more government guaranteed low mortgage rates, just a few ideas it easier to build starter homes again? Yes, we can.

Home sweet home. It’s up to us to make that dream come true for the many and not just the few.  

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.

 

Autumn Knocks at the Door and Yes, We Must Answer

“Listen! The wind is rising, and the air is wild with leaves. We have had our summer eves, now for October eves!”             --“Autumnal Resignation” by Humbert Wolfe, 1926

“I’m going to need that back now that you’re done with it. Can I have it? Please?” she politely asked me.

"No!” I protested.  “I don’t want to give it back.  It’s too soon. Can’t I just keep it for a few more weeks. Just a little longer. Maybe even for another day or two? PLEASE!!!!!!” I said, my voice rising in protest.

I gave Mother Nature my best toothy grin, hoping that somehow, I could hold on to summer, and I might be able to convince her to not begin autumn on the 22^nd of September, as the plan goes for God’s creation this year. The fall equinox is officially on the fourth Thursday of the ninth month in 2022. That day the sun shines directly on the equator and both the northern and the southern hemispheres enjoy the exact same amount of daylight.  It happens at 9:04 pm for those of us in the east.

But like many other years, I had so much fun this summer and I just do not want it to end.  Not yet. Not now. Every September is the same. I’m reluctant to hand back summer to Mother Nature. After all, I won’t get to enjoy it again for another 273 days! That’s when summer solstice happens next, on the 21^st of June 2023.

This longing to make summer stretch out as long as possible has been a part of my make up as long as I can remember. As a kid, come September, I didn’t want to give up my summer freedom and return to the regimented pace of school. Long afternoons of playing wiffleball in the back yard. Long days at the beach, dodging the occasional jellyfish and eating sand covered peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in the warm sun, then getting wrapped up in a towel by Mom as the long shadows of dusk came out. 

Almost no better feeling in the world, those last few precious minutes of a perfect summer day.  

Now in my life as an adult, it’s not school that beckons to me come the end of summer. It’s the siren song of work, of going from zero to 60 overnight, of returning to the frenetic pace of life in these parts of the world.  Coming back to town and getting back to the “normal” pace of activities. It’s like being shot out of a cannon. Until on or around Labor Day all is calm and all is bright.

But then on Labor Tuesday the traffic returns and the school busses fill up and kids are jam packed with stuff to do from dawn until dusk and the highways are stacked up again and the Red Sox wind down their season, and the church I serve begins all of its committees and programs again. If only we could slow down ourselves come September and then October but instead it is most often….

Off to the races!

There really is no way to move from one season to the next, elegantly, or smoothly. Embracing autumn can be hard because we have really enjoyed our summers. This seasonal transition is just as jarring in December when the first snow starts to fly. It is miraculous in the spring when the flowers begin to bud. Then it is so graceful come June when the breaking of the waves on the beach and the staying power of long days, herald summer’s return.

Granted, there are autumnal blessings I absolutely love.

The technicolor God show of leaves that turn so bright and bold in their colors, that cling to the trees and then fall to the earth in a beautiful dance of demise.  I love a chilly evening when I build my first fire in the firepit, hang out with friends for a fun fall Friday night, maybe even make ‘smores. I love the way the earth itself seems to begin to settle down and settle in come autumn, as plants die back and green gives ways to bare trees and the brown earth. I love the swishing sound of downed leaves caught up in a brisk autumn wind. I love the night of Halloween when my neighborhood is jam packed with costumed trick or treaters who laugh and celebrate as they make their way up my long driveway, open bags in hand. I love the excitement of October baseball, though this year the Sox are stumbling to a last place finish.

Wait ‘til next year!

That could be the melancholy cry of the fall. Wait ‘til next year! Wait ‘til next summer! But for now, since none of us can do anything about the march of days and the turning of the calendar, let us enjoy autumn as much as we can.  It is here after all. It is official. 

Bring it on. As the poet Humbert Wolfe concludes in his poem “Autumn Resignation” ….

“Spring passes and one remembers one’s innocence.

Summer passes and one remembers one’s exuberance.
Autumn passes and one remembers one’s reverence.”

Amen.

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.

 

    

      

When Someone Who Holds the World Up For Us, a Pillar, Dies....

The people in your life are like the pillars on your porch. Sometimes they hold you up, and sometimes they lean on you. Sometimes it's enough to know they are standing by.--Merle Shain, Canadian author

She was always there. And then she wasn’t anymore.

This week our family was rocked by the sudden death of our beloved Aunt Donna: mom and grandmother, wife and friend, neighbor, and churchgoer. Just in her late seventies, her passing was so unexpected. Her death was like a blow to our familial solar plexus, like our collective breath was suddenly taken away, and we didn’t know what to do next or how to respond. Part of our shock was the quickness with which she left us, the awful surprise of her death.

But so too, what rocked us, what certainly rocked me and continues to, as her 61-year-old nephew, is the fact that she is really gone now. This relative who knew me from the moment I was born. Who always had a supply of eggnog in her house for me, even though I was no longer eight years old! Donna—who always showed me such gracious hospitality and care when I visited her and my Uncle Billy in Florida after Christmas, for the past nineteen Decembers. But now she is truly absent, at least on this side of existence. My beliefs tell me that some day when I die, I will absolutely see her again and that is a comfort and yet: for now, I won’t see her.

That makes me very sad.

Like many of the beloved older folks in my life, I guess I just took her being there, being here, being alive, for granted. That’s often how it is with the people we love in this life. We just trust the universe, or God, or fate to keep our loved ones around. We certainly do not want to spend any significant amount of time thinking about when they will leave us. Then they do leave us and then our hearts break. Yes, it is pretty human to just assume that people like my Aunt Donna will always be with us, still with us, when we wake up tomorrow.

Until they are not. Until they are gone.

My Aunt Donna and others like her, are the special people, I’d call pillars in this world. A pillar. When you look at a strong and true building that’s withstood the test of time, look for the pillars. It is these that hold up a structure and ensure it will endure and last. Pillars are designed to carry the weight for everyone. No pillars and things can fall apart. No pillars and life can be shaky.

As a pillar, Donna was someone whose strength helped bind us all together somehow as family. She was someone older whom I leaned upon at times for care and love. Someone who by sheer force of personality pushed us as family to be loving and loyal and true to each other.  

Pillars make for strong families. No pillars? No family. Not really.

And it is not just our relatives who claim this place in our world as pillars.  In the church I serve we could never be a vibrant and loving community without our church pillars, faithful women like Ruth and dependable men like Charlie who are always there. Always follow through. Always willing to lend a hand. Always generous, ready to brew a pot of coffee or shovel snow or make a casserole for a sick church member.

Or I think of Queen Elizabeth II and her recent death. What a pillar she has been and not just for England or the United Kingdom for more than 70 years, but for the world as a whole really. She lived with dignity, poise, and grace for more than two generations on the world stage, outlived so many presidents and prime ministers and despots too. I cannot fathom what the people of England must be feeling right now, the intense grief at losing someone who has been with them through so, so much, as their leader. Through war. Through peace. Through upheaval and tumult. Through everything.

But there’s the thing about pillars.  When one pillar goes down, another pillar is needed to step up and continue the support and work of life.  I suppose people like me in my family and community…. am I supposed to be a pillar now? Hard to fathom and yet: every generation gets to the stage in life when they become the pillar generation.  The ones with age and experience enough to bring a family together. Or a church. Or a nation.

Pillars.  Thank you, Aunt Donna. Thank you, Ruth. Thank you, Queen Elizabeth. You can all rest now. Job well done. Now it is time for us, for this generation, to be the pillars.

May God give us that strength.

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.