I moved nine times in the past three years: each move just as dismal as the one beforehand. Coordinating logistics while arranging my belongings into mounds of bubble wrap and cardboard boxes sucks. After spending the morning moving into my new house, I was exhausted but eager to get myself situated. The prospect of staying put for the foreseeable future was comforting.
I returned the cargo van and began my final drive out of Seattle. Cruising down I-5, the city that I had called home for the past two-and-a-half years shrunk in the rearview mirror, while the reality of my move bloomed to fruition. My head felt lighter. My stomach churned. I slowly sank in my seat, eyes wide, staring out onto the freeway in disbelief.
Deep breath. I had bought a house in Tacoma, and I was moving out of Seattle.
What have I done?
Walking to his car, he waved to me on the sidewalk as I approached him with a friendly smile. I aspire to meet and know my neighbors, and I push my introverted self to accept any invitation for introductions.
“Hi, I just wanted to introduce myself,” I told him as we shook hands. “My name is Kevin, and I’m your new neighbor; just moved in down the street.”
“Oh, that’s great!” he replied. “Are you a student? Renting a bedroom?”
“Ah—no, I’m not a student. I, uh…I bought that house. I’m the new homeowner.”
“Oh! Nice!” He turned his head slightly. “Well…congratulations. Welcome to the neighborhood!”
I wonder at what age I will stop being asked that damned question that dominates introductions and small talk. I feel so uninteresting when I respond that I am not a student and clarify that I am actually a working adult, as though I am admitting defeat to the forty-hour work week.
While I have learned to expect that question, I sense a peculiar nuance in this context given people’s reactions and responses. The question is an innocuous ice breaker, and I shatter their perceptions of me. I’m a new face in the neighborhood—one unlike the young nuclear families and over-50 crowd that inhabit these streets of single-family detached houses. I’m an untethered white-collar single millennial, and millennial homeownership is as incongruent as it is to pursue it outside of a relationship or family, far away from any relatives.
My decision to pursue homeownership was an evaluation of my budget and my lifestyle. It was the apex of needing to find a new place to live, ongoing conversations about finding home, inspiration from others trying to buy a house, and making a financial investment while the opportunity was still available to me. Rising rent costs in Seattle made me reconsider staying in the city, and I had felt daring enough to play a hand in the real estate game.
Competing in the Seattle area’s real estate market was both exciting and miserable. I obsessed over articles on the region’s housing market, which had been dramatically ruptured by the teeming population growth and ripples from the capital-intensive tech boom that had happened over the past five years. Rising home values and the unhealthy market held a death grip on my attention. I quickly acclimated to real estate lingo and was engrossed in stories of bidding wars, cash offers, and waived contingencies. I talked to my realtor and lender more than my own friends, real estate dominated my conversations, and Redfin became my addiction.
Like so many others who are priced out of Seattle (and King County), I expanded my search outside of the Emerald City. For many, including myself, that meant Tacoma, and for Tacoma, that means a real estate market that’s heating up faster and hotter than ever. As this textbook trend entails, this means new people with higher buying power are moving in and subsequently influencing the extant neighborhood—for better or for worse. This means gentrification.
So when I clarify that I’m not a student renting a bedroom but rather am the new homeowner, I wear all of that context. I’m not just a new face in the neighborhood: I am part of the new face of the neighborhood—a physical embodiment of potential change. And while it’s too early to determine if the neighborhood will actually change or gentrify in the way people resent, that doesn’t excuse me from playing some role in that trend.
Despite my fear of appearing as an avaricious gentrifier, I have not once felt unwelcomed. If anything, these responses are likely signs of curiosity, wonder, and intrigue. Some of this discomfort might be imagined, and I acquiesce it with my desires to return and invest in the community in a mindful manner. I’m not an investor flipping a house and cashing out: I’m here to build my home and find community.
But I still feel discomfort in announcing myself as a homeowner. That statement is anything but flat, no matter how I pacify it in my mind. Homeownership can be riddled with implications about socioeconomic status and personal character, and I am hyperconscious of how I am perceived. I haven’t willingly propagated gentrification, but that doesn’t stop me from feeling blood on my hands.
I approach big decisions with trepidation, and pursuing homeownership is perhaps the biggest one I have made to this day. Clear “correct” answers are comforting, and I chase them with a vociferous hunger.
For me, that means investing time and energy into researching what is “best.” I spent hours researching the right sofa to buy. To what style of furniture I should commit. I schemed layouts of my living room and ran my imagination along my walls.
But obsessive forethought leads to attrition, like when I spent over 20 minutes at IKEA comparing sizes, aesthetics, functionality, and prices of trash receptacles alone. I stacked them, put them side by side, lifted lids, and visualized my kitchen. I paced around the display stands calculating if these plastic containers would offer as much functionality and joy as a higher-end Simplehuman trash bin. I thought about what else I could do with the difference in price.
I struggle with wanting to do things “right.” It was easier as a renter, with a lesser degree of control over changes to my home. I had to live with things as they were: the eyesore light fixtures, the stubborn door that won’t fully shut, and whatever furnishings my roommates brought with them. But now, as a homeowner, I have the debilitating freedom to make changes. The choices and possibilities are endless, bound only by my wallet and my ambition.
The reality is that no one needs to spend 20 minutes pacing around trash receptacles at IKEA. I could feel my absurdity reflecting off the stares from other customers. In the grand scheme of my household, it’s just a trash and a recycling bin. Did I make the right purchase? Who knows. There is no “correct” choice because it doesn’t exist: it just needs to work. And several months later, these IKEA trash bins have been replaced. I’ve counted my losses and moved on.
Forethought and research can only help so much before I need to make a decision and move on. “Right” is relative, and if “right” choices are a fallacy, then the best I can do is make an informed decision and redress as appropriate.
But that doesn’t stop me from wondering if I made the right choice buying this house, and if this is where I find home.
Of all the spaces in my house, the kitchen is where I thrive. Housework is a growing pain and cooking is my respite. It’s a sacrosanct meditation on my personal culinary anthropology. Cooking provides the satisfaction of solving a riddle and the pride of creating a chef d’œuvre. It centers me and nourishes my soul.
Outside of work and home, grocery stores subsequently become my third place. For me, one of the biggest changes with moving is needing to go to different stores. Rearranged aisles can feel so disorienting.
Grocery shopping is twofold: visits to American chains like Safeway for the culturally blended recipes I have adopted; and visits to Asian grocery stores for the foods that stoke and fuel my second-generation flame. There is no substitute for the latter. In the past, when I had spent months living in places without an Asian grocery store, I could feel part of me atrophy. The one-size-fits-all ethnic aisle at the local grocery store is inefficacious.
The Lincoln District in Tacoma houses a longstanding southeast Asian community, and luckily it’s only a five minute drive away. While the businesses are predominantly Vietnamese, this area has enough to quell my Chinese cravings.
My first Asian grocery store visit in Tacoma was to Hong Kong Supermarket—a store whose inventory caters more to Vietnamese cuisine despite its name. Regardless, I felt at ease when I walked in. There’s a distinct placemaking smell of Asian grocery stores: the confluence of live seafood tanks, dried goods, and fragrant produce. Hundreds of pounds of rice greet you near the entrance. Endless glass bottles and jars line the sauce aisle. Shelves are stuffed with illegible packaging.
Asian grocery stores are where I feel most in tune with myself. Where things feel comfortably familiar. Since leaving Michigan, they are also where I feel alone.
My body pangs when I try to identify the unlabeled overstuffed bags of Asian leafy-green vegetables. I feel off when I can’t find the brand of soy sauce. The haw flakes and shrimp chips whisper fond memories of my childhood long past. I feel shame when I look at my shopping basket, which is filled with ingredients whose names in Chinese I forget. When I read Michelle Zauner’s deeply felt personal essay “Crying in H Mart” a few months ago, my heart sank with validation.
Being alone so far away from my family means it’s on me to retain my culture—one whose color continues to fade under this vibrant American sun, decades removed from its loom. Without family around, only I can restore its hues. Walking around Hong Kong Supermarket reminded me how much knowledge I lack as a second-generation Chinese-American. How much fear that instills.
Going to Asian grocery stores and cooking the foods I grew up with is a devout way of worshipping my heritage, my family, and my upbringing. It’s a modern filial piety: the little boy with his mother at the store, now in her shoes at the helm of the household, carrying forth our culture. I derive great pride and satisfaction when I transform these groceries into a dish from my childhood.
I typically cook and dine alone—a comforting routine espoused of independence after moving out of my parents’ house in college. But that comfort shifts when I cook the meals that my mother makes. I don’t just feel independent: I feel alone.
Now that I’ve bought a house two thousand miles away from my parents, I’m learning to accept the fact that this is going to be my new normal for a good while.
I felt like I’ve reached a new adulthood milestone, now that I’m able to host my family in my house. How wild this new reality is, accommodating guests in a private bedroom instead of the living room in a shared apartment. The progeny now with a roof and walls of his own to shelter his parents.
Within minutes of arriving at my house, my parents quickly pointed out problems and got to work. It was late and I was tired, but I was in no position to reject their advice or push away their helping hands. My sister and brother-in-law arrived the next day, and we spent most of the weekend addressing fixes that required my attention. Outlining projects I should take on. Buying tools that I needed.
Some say homeownership makes you an adult, yet I haven’t felt more naive since childhood. One of my biggest challenges as a new homeowner is that I don’t know what I don’t know. Buying a house is like learning the alphabet, and taking care of it is like writing a novel in a foreign language. Twenty years of formal education never spelled out how to repair a fence, replace a door, or fix plumbing issues. I don’t know how to fix what I don’t know is broken.
Having their help around the house was prodigious. We accomplished more that weekend than I’ve been able to do in a month by myself. I looked at my backyard, alleviated of overgrowth, with grateful disbelief. I spend over 60 hours each week working and commuting, leaving limited daylight for yard work. Limited time for house-care (let alone self-care and a social life). Limited energy to expend. They translated my housework into legible lists and checked off the boxes with grace and ease.
A few days after they departed, my father sent me emails about the unfinished housework with helpful tips—an exhortation to sustain the weekend’s momentum. I know that it is hard for you by yourself without family around in your area helping, he wrote. Try to take care yourself and the house.
As much pride as I cull from independence, I recognize the honest barriers of being alone. Housework can be taxing—at times overwhelming. Having an extra hand to tackle the yard, make dinner, or run errands saves hours and headaches. Having an extra income abates worries of financial insecurity.
I reflect on what has changed since moving to Tacoma. Renting never demanded my hand in home fixes. As a renter, I paid for disposable time—time to sleep in, go out, relax. I could pursue the tidiness preachings of Marie Kondo and accumulate tasteful house plants like a trendy millennial. Any problems were just an email or a phone call away to the management company. That was the extent of my home concerns.
Taking on a 98-year-old house has indisputably and significantly altered my lifestyle, and it won’t necessarily go back to how it was before. This is the choice I made. This is my new reality. And as my father empathized, the least I can do is try.
““This used to be my life,” I said, scanning the bustling intersection. We were drinking Tecate outside La Cocina Oaxaqueña before our concert on a tepid Saturday evening, watching this corner of Capitol Hill unfold before us. I turned my gaze down Melrose Ave. “Remember when we could just walk back to my place from here? And be home in like, five minutes?”
He followed my gaze. “Yeah, that was nice.”
“You know, there are times when I wish I was still living in Seattle. Like this weekend.”
“Why is that? Are you missing this Capitol Hill life?” He jokingly gestured at the street. “I mean, if you want, I can take you to R Place or somewhere and get a little wild as a Capitol Hill Gay for one more night.”
I laughed. “Not that. That was never even my life when I lived here. But just the convenience of living in the city, you know? Like, going to this concert was a drive, and I used to be able to walk here in 10 minutes. And then I’m driving back up here tomorrow to see friends just so I can maintain a social life.”
“Okay…. Fair. But I think you got yourself in a good situation with the house. And you will eventually build new connections in Tacoma!”
I munched on tortilla chips as we watched an attractive couple walk past us, breaking beams of car headlights with their slender forms. The night was young, and I wondered what they had planned for their evening. I thought about their life in Seattle; how far they would need to travel to reach their bed when the night closes.
“Right. I mean…I don’t regret buying the house. I know that eventually I’ll look back and be glad I did this (I hope), and it’ll be good for me in the long run. But…I don’t know. There are times where I wonder: am I a little crazy for buying a house at my age? Should I have enjoyed this for longer?”
“Well, knowing you, I feel like that is the choice you would have made, regardless. That’s just what you would have done.”
“Hmm. Yeah.” I washed down the chips with my Tecate. “You’re right.”
It’s Friday night, it’s pouring, and I’m sitting in my car in the Trader Joe’s parking lot, wanting to break.
Growing up in Michigan, I found thunderstorms both frightening and exhilarating. I remember how uncomfortably dense the air becomes with humidity, and how large the dark clouds swell with pent-up rage. It’s an ominous prelude to the roaring thunder that triggers car alarms, the torrent that floods the streets, and the violent lightning that snaps trees like toothpicks.
I felt a thunderstorm brewing inside me, beckoning its deliverance.
It’s Friday night and I am once again alone. I had been eager to leave work early, but what was I even rushing to? I had no plans other than spending the night in my empty house.
I craved a long drive—to go anywhere but home. But I didn’t know where to go. Didn’t know what to do. I thought about trying to see friends in Seattle, but they were a long drive away, along an interstate laden with too many accidents.
The night rain was dispiriting, so I settled for a 15-minute drive to Trader Joe’s. I had nothing better to do, so why not run errands somewhere farther than my neighborhood Safeway. I didn’t even want to cook, but whatever, I needed somewhere to go.
I pulled into a spot in the second row from the entrance, parked my car, and silenced my music. I sat there in the dark, watching headlights refract through the rain on my back window in the rearview mirror. My head felt numb. My stomach had no appetite. I slowly sank in my seat, eyes searching for tears, staring at my windshield, at nothing.
The clouds in my mind swelled and a storm of emotions rolled in. My reality sunk like a massive sinkhole. All at once, I felt saddened by my isolation from everyone. Overwhelmed at my housework to-do list. Frustrated by my lack of enthusiasm to accomplish that list. Scared that I will fail as a homeowner. Discouraged that all my job applications continue to be rejected. Angry at my long commute. Anxious about the upcoming holiday season. I wanted to scream at my situation. Plead for answers.
After thunderstorms in Michigan have wrecked their havoc, the clouds uncover the sun and it shines light on a new climate. The humidity breaks. The air becomes crisp. Breathing is easier. How refreshing that break feels—a dulcet release.
But I’m no longer a child in Michigan. This is my life in the Pacific Northwest, and there are rarely any thunderstorms here. I’ve been here long enough to know that the rain and humidity is interminable.
I’m not going to get that release. I know better.
Headlights flashed to my left, and I watched from the corner of my eye as two women got into the car parked next to me. I imagined the austere sight of me in my dark car, staring vapidly toward the store entrance.
Jeez. I’m being so fucking melodramatic.
Deep breath. I closed my eyes. I’m no longer living my Seattle life. Those days are over—and not just because I bought a house. I’m adjusting to my new life in Tacoma.
The car lights illuminate as I pull the key out of the ignition. I grab my phone and reusable bag, and make my way through the rain.
Three years later, sharing my motives, my impressions, and my trajectory about moving to this corner of the country remains a challenge. My first year here tested my ability to trust my bearings and stand strong in times of ambiguity. My second year here made me critically examine what “home” means and how one finds and builds that as a mobile twenty-something thousands of miles away from my Midwestern roots. This past year, I felt what it means to no longer be a new transplant, now at a point where I must grow alongside the stains and imperfections that I have accumulated over the years in Seattle. I never fully subscribed to the idea of perfect or forever places—not here nor abroad—but I understand that home is an active process. Home doesn’t happen without effort.
Part of finding home includes managing feelings of loneliness and the ebbs and flows of people. My social circles shattered across state borders and time zones even more this past year, and I recognize the time and energy needed to once again build meaningful connections. Given my distance from Seattle and larger list of housework, it doesn’t get easier. This part of my life never seems to settle.
Three years later and sharing my experiences with homeownership in Tacoma is just as challenging. This was never part of my “plan,” if you can even call my intentions as such. And if it’s not being a gentrifier that worries me, it’s the fear of becoming unrelatable to peers now more than ever. I recognize that being a homeowner gives the impression that my life is figured out, but truth be told, it’s not yet where I want it to be. I may have a house, but I’m still learning as I go.
I still ask myself these sisyphean questions: What have I done? Did I make the right choice?
Some say I’m crazy. I severely degraded my commute, which has been an ongoing and a draining woe. I have more bills to pay. More responsibilities to tend to. I’m even farther removed from my social life in Seattle. My errands are now bound by an automobile. So, perhaps they’re right. Perhaps I made a crazy decision.
And maybe it wasn’t the right decision. Or, maybe I’m ahead of the game, awaiting grand validation years from now. It is too early to discern, but what I do know is that a lifetime of big decisions awaits me, and I’m here growing my roots even deeper—for better or for worse.
There will always be better choices that I could have made—in any context, and at any point in my life. The stakes are higher now. The price tags are elevated. I’m getting older. But no choice is perfect. I entertained the idea that everything makes sense in hindsight, and I think it retains merit. Only time can reveal the value of my decisions.
Just as I decidedly took this course of action, I also control the reaction. I am only at the precipice of this grand new chapter in my life, filled with big choices and changes I have yet to anticipate. And as I’ve learned since moving to this corner of the country, I must trust my bearings, build my home, and grow alongside imperfections.
I have more years here to look forward to. More life changes to anticipate. There’s a lot I have to learn. Home is an active process, and now, I’m all in.
