By Sheila Orysiek
SAN DIEGO–Many years ago I had a very ordinary day that changed my life. I was busy in the house, running about with mop and scrub brush cleaning and polishing. My baby son was happily murmuring to himself in his playpen, my husband was at work and the world seemed to be humming along. Then the doorbell rang.
A man identified himself as the friendly local Realtor and asked me if I was interested in listing our house for sale and buying a new one. He told me he would be only too happy to help out. I replied that we had no plans to sell our house. After a few minutes he looked at me with a mingling of disgust and disappointment and asked “Don’t you want to move up?” I said goodbye and closed the door. However, several minutes later I paused in my housekeeping activity, sat down and thought about it.
Exactly what did “moving up” mean? Probably meant a larger house with more rooms; more rooms for me to clean. More rooms to fill up with furniture. Our house was small but comfortable, easy to maintain, I could reach every window with just a stepladder and easily walk to the nearest store. It was very convenient. It is true we didn’t have a view, but then we were not in any danger of sliding down a hill after a heavy rain either.
Perhaps it meant living in a gated community with a homeowner’s association that wouldn’t allow a clothes line. I rather liked occasionally hanging the clothes outside. There was a certain mockingbird that sat in a nearby tree and we had had many delightful conversations. Maybe moving up meant having a three car garage instead of two. That would also necessitate a third car to fill it, which we didn’t need or two bigger cars which we didn’t need either.
As someone who loves to bake and cook (or at least I used to!) I had always wanted a large gleaming gadget filled kitchen. That is, until I knew someone who had one. Her kitchen was the size of my living room, dining room and kitchen combined. It looked grand. She spent a great deal of energy running from one end of it to another – from the sink to the refrigerator to the ovens, to the stove top – all the while making detours around the beautiful “island.” Meanwhile, in my little kitchen which is euphemistically called “a step saver” – I can indeed reach almost anything within a very few steps. I’ve come to appreciate that economy of movement.
Maybe moving up means living in a neighborhood with beautiful hills and no sidewalks, but then I would have to drive to take a walk somewhere else. Or a house on a steep incline so my son couldn’t ride his bike – or the sewage would have to be pumped up – with concomitant disaster if the electricity went down. Or a house so wonderful that every window and entrance had a security code and an alarm would go off if a protocol wasn’t observed whenever I wanted to open a window. I knew friends who had homes like that.
Or I could have a home large enough to need a weekly multiple maid cleaning service, a garden service, an indoor plant service, window cleaning service – that way I would have to schedule my activities so I could be home for theirs. I knew friends who had this, too. “Oh, I can’t go out to lunch – I have to be home for the indoor plant man.” Or another who had a home with such high beamed ceilings that the furniture had to be specially designed so as to aesthetically fit the space. She couldn’t just see a nice chair – and buy it.
Did moving up mean having more closets to fill? It could also mean room for a huge television screen. Then we could watch the world tear itself up on the nightly news in really big images. The problem with this moving up idea was that once one started on this climb there was no real end to it. There would always be someone else higher on life’s hill looking down. I knew a lot of people who because of their life style had to work overtime. Though my husband did occasionally work overtime it was never because of our life style. I hated the thought of pressuring him with this moving up thing. I had married him because I wanted to spend time with him, not for his earning ability.
Maybe moving up meant being happier. I looked around at my neighbors, all of them were sturdy, clean living, decent people and they seemed happy enough on the little street on which we all lived. They appeared to derive their contentment from the families they were raising, in the happiness of their children, their religious beliefs and the normalcy of their lives. I have learned a lot from my neighbors. I didn’t think that my religious beliefs, Judaism, meant moving up either. I knew someone very close to me who had been consumed with this moving up business and it had bedeviled her into a frustrating life. Her existence was a struggle made worse because she was never happy with what she had.
My son experienced this push to move up while still in elementary school as the children teased each other over what name brands of clothes and shoes they wore. I told him he could have the expensive name brands when he could afford to buy them. Though I could easily afford to buy these clothes for him, I didn’t see a particular need for an eight or nine year old to gad about in a certain brand of clothes which would be outgrown before it was outworn. And once when he did save up for an expensive name brand T-shirt and it fell apart in the first wash, he began to see that quality doesn’t necessarily reside in an inflated price tag.
I have come to the conclusion this need for moving up doesn’t exist. It is a figment of the imagination of an unhappy soul. Since I have lived for over four decades in my cozy, convenient house, I have obviously failed at the game of moving up. I think moving forward is a much better goal.
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Sheila Orysiek is a freelance writer based in San Diego. Her email is orysieks@sandiegojewishworld.com