A Memoir of Housing (Part 2)

I used Pakistan a bit ahead of schedule for dramatic effect. We first moved to Arlington, Virginia for the job that took me to Pakistan 8 months later. Katie and the kids stayed in Arlington for another year.

We were the small, poor rental house on a mostly well-do-do street of large owner-occupied homes. Strangely, I cannot come up with any memories of the bathroom of this house, though I suspect I used it. I remember the Oreo that for some reason stayed on the back porch for several months. I remember this because I became fascinated that not even the ants would eat it, which gave me second thoughts about Oreos.

We painted Maddie's room pink, again, but this time, having not hired a professional, I learned about how colors appear lighter in the can then on the wall. She had the Pepto Bismol room.

We barely fit a couch into the basement where one could sit to watch TV with one's knees about seven inches from the TV, which was good because it was only a 19-inch TV.

About two months in, we learned that I would be going to Pakistan for a year, so the subsequent six months in the Arlington house have exaggerated emotional weight in my memory...but not the bathroom. Caleb coming up the stairs with his Calvin and Hobbes facial expressions when he would smell dinner. Glow-in-the-dark dance parties in the boys' room. Walking to Ashlawn Elementary down the little path through the woods at the end of the road.

Then, the bleak day that we told the kids I was leaving. Maddie cried. Caleb was aloof until I said, because I didn't really know what to say, "You'll be the man of the house, buddy." Then he broke down. "I don't want to a man of the house. I'm only five years old." And I realized it was kind of a dumb thing to say.

A few days later I moved to the lonely house. An empty, quiet house. One year in Pakistan. I learned to survive, but I don't want to write about the Pakistan house other than that when I returned to it after my second and final two week visit home over the course of the year, and I got to the house and felt relieved because I was "home," I knew I needed to get out of there. That's when I realized I was dying a slow spiritual death without my family.

The year ended and I met Katie and the kids at Disney World.