This is Part 3 in the Humdrum series/journey toward homeownership. Enjoy Part 1, where I worry-debate over the pros and cons of buying a house. Read Part 2 on why move out of Chicago. If you’re new to Humdrum and would like get it in your inbox, subscribe here.
My partner and I sometimes talk about how we don’t really feel like we’re adults, despite the fact that I’m old enough to have a kid in high school, which as a child free person makes my brain stutter. I don’t have those conventional markers of adulthood: I’m not a homeowner, I’ve no kids, I don’t even own a car. My partner and I are not married yet. I wouldn’t even have said I had a career until recently.
Sometimes I feel proud to be different; this was my own rebellion. I wrote in my last newsletter that the vision I'd clung to of my future was not the small town or the house with a garage and picket fence. A reason for originally moving to Chicago was to be a part of the excitement and energy of living in a big city: staying out late and going to concerts and making out on dance floors, and eating greasy fries and slices of pizza at 2am, midnight screenings of weird movies, meeting interesting people with weird outfits and rainbow hair, cocktail lounges and art museums and niche galleries and inventive shops with eclectic goods you hadn’t imagined before but are happy to discover someone did.
Creative energy seemed to flow through the streets in cities where you saw people out on sidewalks instead of towns where everyone was shut behind their doors. I now realize the mistake I made was assuming that if I couldn’t see it, if evidence of this energy wasn’t in front of my own eyes, it wasn’t there.
I think back to the few years I lived in Green Bay during and right after college, and how that city didn’t suit me. Another mistake was assuming “interesting” and “creative” (and all those fun, positive adjectives) had to be tied to geography. A history of growing up in small Midwestern towns painted the entire region as lame, but not Chicago, the country’s third largest city. Without realizing, I had induldged in the coastal bias that plagues this country.
Many of the writers and artists I admire don’t live in big cities. They live in Michigan, Ohio, Iowa. If this hilarious and outstanding bisexual essayist can build a life for herself in a small Michigan town, why can’t I? If this metalsmith whose jewelry I’ve been coveting for years lives in Kansas City, than obviously creative people can live in the Midwest. They live everywhere. My own artist mother lives in a tiny town in Wisconsin!
All this is a lead up to say that my partner and I are considering, probably-almost-for-sure, moving to Des Moines, IA. This may seem like a bizarre choice. The people I know who have moved during the pandemic hightailed it out of places like Chicago and NYC and Atlanta, to Austin, Florida, the mountains in North Carolina. Warm or idyllic places, not deeper into Midwestern cornfields.
Des Moines is a cool and underappreciated town. It has an arts scene, a massive farmers market, festivals, great restaurants, bike lanes. It’s not unlike Chicago in many ways, just on a much smaller, more manageable scale. It’s also prettier. Chicago is flat as a pancake but there are hills and woods in Des Moines. I’m more nervous biking up hills than driving in that city.
The main reason for choosing Des Moines though, is that my sister and her kids live there. Growing up, my immediate family (parents plus brother, sister, me) didn’t live near any of our relatives. While we spiraled around the Midwest, one set of grandparents was in Georgia, the other St.Louis. Aunts and uncles and cousins are scattered to the south and west and east. We were a solid, solitary unit of five.
This, coupled with a strong, independent, bootstrap mentality no doubt had a heavy hand in my enthusiastic jump from Green Bay to Chicago to China and back again. Looking back, I’m grateful. It makes uprooting once again less scary; I’ve done it so many times before. The trade off, however, was that I missed getting to know extended family or a particular place. I don’t know what “roots” or “home” mean in the way other people use them. People ask me where I’m from and I say “Midwest, I guess.”
Now I'm missing my nieces and nephews grow up. I’m parachuting into their lives once, maybe twice a year, enough to see that they are sprouting inches and morphing into creative and articulate little humans. I’m missing the journey, the new words, new foods, stories, dance parties, art sessions, all the things that go into the shaping of a person.
Why does anyone choose to live in a particular place? How do you make that choice? When I told my mother we would be moving away from Chicago, she observed that my partner and I could really go anywhere we wanted. Technically true, though I didn’t feel it. I love travel and seeing new places but the idea of making a home in a place I didn’t know at all, even an idyllic mountain town with outdoor vacation vibes, ties my guts in knots. I hadn’t lived in Iowa since age 12, yet there is a sense of familiarity that is comforting somehow. I was too young then, I think, to develop the loathing I had for the small town in Minnestota of my teen years, one I will never live in again. As an adult, I’ve visited Des Moines many times, was charmed by the Art Festival, the sculpture garden, the cute brick homes, and that massive farmer’s market. Knowing makes the choice feel easier, the leap from one kind of life to another less scary. I’m not sure I’d want to move there if family didn’t also live there. Who’s to say though? A return to is a theme of late. Two of my coworkers moved out of the Chicago-area back to places where they had lived decades ago; a couple friends are contemplating decamping back to their home states.
Of course there are material reasons for moving. Homes are still cheaper in Des Moines than what you’ll get in Chicago. According to Realtor.com, the median sold price for a home in Des Moines is $184K and in Chicago it is $305K. The cost of living overall is less. I’m nurturing dreams of a big flower garden and growing my own vegetables, maybe even having an apiary, with room for my partners’ archery range in the backyard. I could have an office space big enough for both a craft table and a blue velvet reading chair and he can get his gaming dungeon. These things are not out of reach in the smaller city. Plus, all the things I do like about urban life, interesting restaurants and boutiques, and a nearby grocery store are all in this small Midwestern city. It also has an airport so I can always leave for a bit.
Another plus of moving to a very different area is the opportunity to smash the reset button for myself, to shake off inertia and old habits. A big city can encourage an introvert (at least this one!) to burrow more deeply into themselves. A smaller one, will encourge new habits, I hope, in paying more attention and giving more focus to place and community.
This is all very exciting. It could turn out to be a mistake. I do worry about moving to a Red state, with a governor trying to ban mask mandates in schools. On the other hand, I’m happy, even eager to move to a state where my vote matters more than in the perennially Blue Illinois. Chuck Grassley is 88 and should not spend the last years of his life blocking legislation in the Senate. I would dearly like to help vote him out of office.
There are things I worry about just with buying a house, and I worry too about the friendships and relationships I’ve built here and what this will mean for us in the future. I worry about building new relationships, as a childfree woman in her late 30s, if this is even possible.
But I remember my therapist's advice for having a grounded decision, not looking for the “right” one or the “wrong” one. And frankly, my brain has tied itself up in enough knots already trying to predict the future. Buying a house, buying a house and moving, this kind of settling down, settling in, settling in closer to family, and financially attaching myself to a place is the most traditional, most adult thing I’ve ever done. It’s weird. The worries aren’t going away but neither are the positives. Whatever happens in the next couple years, moving to Des Moines is the thing that fits now.
A fun thing
Still thinking about
🏘️ A fascinating dive into the bananas real estate market.
🐺 Kathleen Rooney interviews Gina Frangello about her captivating memoir, Blow Your House Down. (Shout out to Chicago writers!)
🏙️ This essay got me thinking about local politics and the local business community in a completely new way.
🔗 The metaverse is bad.
📖 The essay collection Tomboyland by Melissa Faliveno really got me. It’s about identity, gender, sexuality, and growing up in the Midwest.
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Humdrum is written by me, Christina Brandon! Based in Chicago, I’m a writer and user experience researcher working in the civic space. I am ever hopeful at heart. Got feedback, thoughts, wanna say “hi”? Reply to this email, or jump over to Twitter or Instagram.