SMALL KINE HIPPIE

To be honest, I did not honestly think we’d ever own our own hale, or home. I had high hopes for a condo, maybe even a nice townhouse, but single-family homes on Oahu are (and have mostly always been) crazy expensive. Even in this down market, the median sales price for single-family homes on Oahu sits around $1 million. 1 million! And many of these $1 million homes are teardowns, not even ready to live in.

Even though my husband and I work in real estate, I didn’t really trust we’d actually pull off a single-family home. My husband, however, was determined. After all, the reason we started our business was because it was the only possible way we ever thought we’d have a shot, in Hawaii at least. It was our hail-mary attempt to ‘make it’. Eight wild years later, with a pandemic in the middle, and we really, actually did.

It took us about a year to settle in and trust this place was really ours. To start painting, drilling, installing – all the things you can never do as a tenant. I think with such a high mortgage, unstable economy, and super high childcare costs, we weren’t sure if we’d get to stay here. But we did, and with our first refinance under our belts (thank God, literally!) it sure looks like this is our family home for good.

It’s a weird transition to this being our house. Our real, adult home. The feel of the air, the smells, the sounds of kids at the park across the street, the gentle hum of our neighbor’s speakers blasting music from his garage – these are all ethereal feels that our son will always recall. The way I can still imaging the smell of my parent’s house, the thrum of the washing machine, the pitter-patter of steps up and down the stairs. Now, those same types of memories will be ingrained in my son’s memory, of this house, of our family.

It makes me feel both old and young – weirdly old enough to have accomplished this (how did that happen?!) and oddly too young for this responsibility (who let us take on this house?! Are they sure?!) and mixed up inbetween. I didn’t expect it to be so emotional, so calm, so content, so scary, and so warm and fuzzy wrapped into one. I didn’t know what it would feel like when we reached this dream of ours, and I’m still figuring out how it feels. More than anything, though, it mostly feels right. As if this house was waiting for our family, as much as we were working towards and waiting for it.