Maureen Mancini Amaturo

SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO?

You are closer to seventy than twenty, and you know you need to simplify, downsize, and should move to a place where school taxes aren’t so high because you don’t have kids in school anymore. You know the house you live in — have been living in all these years — is more challenging than cozy with all the steps and multi-levels and maintenance. But you know where everything is. You know the stove’s shortcomings. You know where to find the holiday decorations — in the basement, in the area that doesn’t flood. You know that  you have to hit the basement door with your knee to loosen it in order to pull it open You know you don’t have enough closet space so you have to stuff your collection of sunglasses in that giant tote bag into the bottom of one of the two closets housing everything you and your husband ever owned — you stuff it on top of another big tote filled with hair accessories which is stuffed alongside another tote filled with jewelry from the 80s and a bag full of yarn for crochet projects you may never do. So, the closet floor —valuable storage space —  looks like a pile of soft boulders, but when you need something, you know where it is. It’s organized chaos.

You know the medicine cabinet mirror doesn’t close all the way, and the plastic bowls and lids tumble out of your kitchen cabinet every time — not sometimes, every time — you reach for one. You know your husband has taken over the library, and his clothes and hobbies and shoes are strewn everywhere.

Your kids are grown and have moved out on their own, cluttering their own living spaces (though they’ve left quite a bit behind taking up precious space for your own clutter.) You know you should be downsizing, and you know there’s not an ice cube’s chance in hell that’s going to happen.

You’ve lived in this house almost 35 years. You’ve created history. You watched your azaleas and lilacs blossom to full-grown because they were a Mother’s Day gift from your husband and children almost 35 years ago. The chip in the wall behind one bedroom door — courtesy of baseball bats and catcher’s equipment — is a souvenir of your son’s elementary, middle school, high school, and college baseball career. You can still see the tape marks on your daughter’s bedroom door from her “Wizard of Oz” poster. Your doctors, friends, pass times, and shopping haunts are all close by.

But you can’t climb the steps anymore, and the laundry is in the basement and your bedroom is on the second floor. You can’t go up and down and up and down the way you could 35 years ago. Your knees are begging you not to forget something you’ll need to avoid making another trip upstairs to get it. The steps to your front door are Mt. McKinley.

You know you need one-level living.

You know you’d love a new stove and more closets.

You know you need to move.

You know you’d love to move.

You don’t know where to move to.

You hate the thought of all the upheaval.

You start the search for a new house. You establish a relationship with a real estate agent who is very anxious to list your house and get it on the market. You see dump after dump after dump — some in faraway places that triple the upheaval of a move — and the prices for these disheveled dumps are more than a million dollars. Because the market is what it is these days, you know sellers don’t negotiate. The price is the price unless you’re willing to play bidding war and pay even more than the criminal asking price.

So, you think about it. Do you overpay for a house, pay moving costs, legal costs, real estate broker costs, inspection fees, bear the upheaval of relocation and reallocation of everything you own, and still incur renovation expenses to the tune of a few hundred thousand dollars on the dumpy new place? Or do you renovate the house — no home — you have lived in these 35 years. Pay an architect who tells you you’ll need a new survey. Pay for the new survey, pay the contractor, pay for new appliances, pay a water surface engineer and hope they can mitigate the flooding problems for all that money knowing you’ll have to give up your garage toward that end, live in the midst of heavy machinery and hammering and sawing and digging and crews of strangers filling your home for six months, at least. Yet, all of this upheaval equals only 50% of the upheaval of moving to a new location plus renovation. (And none of this considers the inconvenience to your neighbors, whom you hope remain your friends after the chaos calms.)

And while you weigh one upheaval against the other, the real estate agent is hounding you to list your home because it’s a seller’s market, and “You have a gold mine. It will sell right away with a bidding war,” she says. And you tell her for the fifteenth time you can’t list your house because you have nowhere to move to and you don’t want to live in your car.

You continue to receive emails from your real estate agent inviting you to look at homes — which all have several flights of steps and multi-level living, laundry in the basement, only 930 square feet of living space, taxes over $20,000 a year, and HOA fees $1,000 a month and up, and you are retired with a fixed income and know those options are insane. You start to think the dump you live in is better than these more expensive dumps, and if you stay and renovate your own home, you will have less packing and reorganizing. And no moving costs. No real estate agent. No trying to figure out where things are in a new neighborhood or town.

And you envision the new laundry room, bedroom, bathroom with a walk-in shower, and even squeeze a studio for yourself into the plan, all on the first floor behind your family room and kitchen — which will also be renewed, by the way. You can see that large, arched window up high in that new back room that would be visible when you walk in the front door. You see light and open space. Going from your TV room straight to your bed is something you’ve dreamed of since your knees started to go. Working at your computer and walking just one room over to throw the wash in the dryer sounds wonderful. You imagine new wall colors, new furniture, lots of closets. You start to like the idea of the upheaval of renovation in this home versus the upheaval of a move.

You request the new survey, and pay that money.

You realize you don’t have the original deed to your home, and begin the process to get that.

You contact the contractor.

You contact the architect, who meets with you and disappears for two weeks, so you have to badger him to send a proposal.

And as long as you’re beginning this process of changes, you ask each other, “Isn’t it time we made a will?” You meet with a lawyer. 

Nothing has really begun yet, and things are already in the upheaval column.

You are doing everything possible to make your life easier and make things easier for your children in the process. You are more organized than you’ve ever been, yet upheaval is in your face.

You hope you live long enough to enjoy this decision when the dust settles.

Maureen Mancini Amaturo is a NY-based fashion/beauty writer with a Creative Writing MFA. She teaches writing, founded and leads Sound Shore Writers Group, and produces literary and gallery events. Her work appears in more than 100 publications globally. Recognition includes: Bram Stoker Award and TDS Creative Fiction Award nominations, Honorable Mention and Certificate of Excellence in poetry from Havik Literary Journal, Editor’s Choice Award shortlist by Reedsy and Flash Fiction Magazine, Funny Pearls UK  best short story selection.