The day after we returned from our first trip to Ethiopia, we received a call from our landlord. I like our landlord a lot. We’ve lived in the same well-maintained apartment for 3 1/2 years, paying the same $1300 a month that we paid when we moved in. That’s a very good price for our quiet but convenient-to-everything neighborhood, and we have lots of room and a nice backyard where we can garden and BBQ. So, though the interior is a bit old, I like the apartment, and I like the landlord, and I like paying only $1300 a month for rent and squirreling the rest away in savings, stocks, and mutual funds. Our lease had long ended but I felt pretty secure. Until…
“My son, my son is getting married,” he told me. He is a simple-speaking immigrant from a Baltic state. “I am giving the apartment to my son. I am sorry, I am sorry.”
“Oh,” I said. We were in the car and Mr. P was driving. He looked at me, concerned, as it was a very serious “oh.”
“I am sorry,” he said again. “It’s just that he’s getting married, and he needs the apartment in… in September, so you need to leave before August 1st.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“You are good tenants, so I wanted to give you enough time to move. You can move before.”
“Oh. Thanks.”
“So, August 1st. I am sorry.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
I ended the call. For some reason, I felt very calm. In fact it was last calm moment I can recollect at this moment. I calmly told Mr. P what our landlord had said. I calmly looked out the window as we drove through our neighborhood. I calmly went inside and started looking at apartments. And then I started freaking the fuck out.
The apartment market is a lot tighter than it was the last time we moved. The one apartment we found in a comparable neighborhood with enough space cost $2000 a month. And then there was the timing aspect… sometime in the next 4-8 weeks, we would get an appointment at the US embassy in Addis Ababa to secure an entrance visa to bring our son home. We wanted to move immediately so we won’t have to subject a transitioning toddler to any undue upheaval, but changing our address before the embassy appointment was unwise. We thought about moving later in the summer, but apartment-hunting at the last minute seemed unwise. So, we decided to buy.
A flurry of activity. Pre-approval, open houses, real estate agents. We lucked out with our agent, a dynamic woman who flooded us with information, listings, and advice. After touring several houses, we decided condos were more our style, and we quickly made an offer on a recent conversion about 1 mile from our current apartment. It was a fair offer given the sluggish condo market and the fact it only had one bathroom, but the owner rejected it. Then, we decided to look in nearby Belmont, which boasts excellent schools and better neighborhoods. Our philosophy became: Buy the cheapest place in an expensive neighborhood.
And we found it. Well-maintained, 4 bedroom, 1.5 baths, two top floors of a two-family house that was recently owner-occupied. Pros: Lots of sun, rose bushes on the periphery of the property, sunroom, deck, new floors, new windows, new oil tank, quiet neighborhood, nice parking, walking distance to two commercial districts and two playgrounds. Cons: Smallish kitchen, weird steep stairs, bad closets and interior doors, 2 attic bedrooms with no dormers, a prevailing feeling of “old.” But it was a good value — by far the cheapest place in an expensive neighborhood.
So we made an offer. The owner accepted. Yea! We had two weeks to secure a lender to meet our closing date of mid-May. I began to fantasize that we might be moved into our new condo by the time the kid came home from Ethiopia.
That was last Thursday evening. On Friday morning, I received word from the adoption agency that I was due in Addis Ababa in one week for our embassy appointment. Instead of 4-8 weeks, it was 3 weeks. First time ever in international adoption that something took less time than expected. Since I am the US citizen, I have to travel… and Mr. P stays here to secure us a mortgage.
Stay tuned if you’ve ever wanted to know what its like to fly 17 hours with an almost 3-year old boy who speaks no English (the 8-hour layover in Dulles is a bonus).
