What Coronavirus Taught Me About the Meaning of Home

Finding Shelter From the Storm

What COVID-19 taught me about the meaning of home

Delphine Lee Here's the thing about viruses: They can have a profound impact on more than your good health — including . Take real estate, for example. No, I'm not a Realtor. But I am a mother of grown kids who no longer live with me. And I've been really looking forward to finding a new place that feels like home. I blame it on my childhood. I grew up in Washington, D.C., in a succession of townhouses. Today, it's not their interiors I remember most — they were not the stuff of House Beautiful — but the common outdoor spaces my siblings and I played in, and the people who made up the communities. Each house had less of a lawn and more of a patch of concrete — surrounded by more concrete, all of it communal areas. That might sound dreary, but for us, the neighborhood kids, it was heaven — and perfect for biking, roller-skating and drawing some serious hopscotch boxes. It taught me that a home isn't just about what's inside, but also who is, and who's outside and around you — neighbors sharing life in all its beautiful complexity. For all those reasons and more, I'm still a city girl at heart. It wasn't until I married at the age of 31 that I gave single-family homes so much as a sideways glance. Owning a house had been my husband's dream, while I thought an apartment near my work in the city would be nice. Being young and in love, and having no idea what we were getting into, I ended up saying yes to a two-story, red-brick colonial on 3 acres that needed lots of work. It was in a small, rural Maryland development without sidewalks, perched atop a lovely tree-lined hill where you could hear cows moo in the distance and smell manure wafting up on a windy day. Most nights, the skies were black as tar. On others, bats fluttered in the moonlight. People sightings were infrequent, though I learned quickly that if someone passed by in another car, it was considered impolite if you didn't wave. My husband, never as interested in socializing as I was, enthusiastically embraced this ritual of greeting from afar. Sometimes he'd offer the Pope's backward wave instead, just to amuse himself. Soon, weeks and months of living there gave way to years. Thirteen, in fact, before my husband's job took us to Texas with our two young sons and dog, Benjamin, in tow. This time we landed in a suburban community, where we had an HOA and a driveway, and were required to have two trees on our front lawn. The houses were close together, but there was little sense of community. Most people drove into and out of their garages, invisible to their neighbors, and rarely ventured outside their homes on foot. The years passed quickly, though they weren't all easy — just as it is for most families. Our children grew up and , and then to jobs in big cities filled with concrete. Through it all, the country and the suburbs, I couldn't shake the feeling that I'd become an alternate-universe version of myself. Don't get me wrong — I was grateful to have had the opportunity to own homes where I could raise my family. Both houses, though, felt like they were meant for someone else. It was like inheriting a pair of good winter gloves that do the job but never quite fit your hands or feel like your own. Speaking of gloves, this past winter my husband and I made the decision to move to Florida. My reasons for wanting to move were hardly original: I longed for a one-story house with less stuff and less expense in a not-freezing state, and within walking distance of other humans. Family nearby would be a bonus. The trouble was, my husband didn't share my feelings. It wasn't so much that he bloomed wherever he was planted; he just didn't need more than our community of two. After years of negotiating, we finally agreed on Florida. Our plan? We'd sell our house and rent something, and then take our time finding the right neighborhood before we buy. We set a date to put the house on the market, created a punch list, enlisted some help and got to work. It was really going to happen. Until it wasn't. As we were readying to move out, ... to the whole world. At first we proceeded as if everything would be OK. But as the days passed and the news got darker, we were faced with the truth: A . My one-day-at-a-time coping strategy became one week and then two, and is now looking like months. The questions appear insurmountable: How does someone visit an open house if they've been told to stay 6 feet away from everyone, or to shelter in place? If we were lucky enough to sell our house quickly, where would we go? A virtual visit is not the same as a get-on-a-plane-and-check-it-out visit. What if the people who live in the house we find end up sick? What then? Will it ever feel clean to me? By postponing our sale are we missing the traditional spring market, or will the dog days of August become the real-estate industry's new spring? And what about the , job market and interest rates? Nobody, it seems, has the answers. So for now, here we sit, within our freshly painted “paper white” walls — chosen to help the next owners envision their new life within this space. Gone are the photographs, the personal knickknacks, the art, the books piled high. Gone are the toys, the trophies, the penciled growth charts that once populated our kitchen cupboard's frame. And yet, the place I once viewed as the source of my emptiness feels strangely like home — albeit a temporary one. It's not because of what it holds within, or where it's located. It's because of what it is helping to shelter us from: an illness that's changing the course of all our lives. And although they're keeping their distance, people have emerged from their homes to push baby carriages and take walks with spouses, children and dogs. At long last there is a sense of neighborly awareness, as we wave and ask one another how the family is doing. When the pandemic ends, will it last? We're still planning on moving, but in the meantime, here in the suburbs, I'm enjoying that part of the city I miss the most.

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