The Pod People vs. The Yard Gnome Ghetto

When I was a child, I believed, with good reason, that I’d been ordered from the Sears Catalog. My parents were both charter employees at one of the South’s largest Sears Mail Order plants: my father was a buyer for the catalog, specializing in whatever age group I happened to belong to at the time, and my mother was responsible for building and managing the telephone shopping service for that regional hub. When the Wish Book showed up at my house, it came hand-delivered by Santa’s helpers. Ever since, I’ve seen myself as the poster child for America’s first real middle class. This belief, and the fact that I am among the oldest of the Baby Boom cohort, is at the center of my sense that I represent my generation. I’ve got the average height, weight, and shoe size to prove that, if it’s happening to me, Forrestine Gump, it’s happening to a lot of you, too…or soon will be. I typify; therefore, I blog.

I began Mature Landscaping when our twenty-year-old house went on the market (hence, one excuse for the blog title) in August. We believed the time had come to downsize, that the upkeep and yard work were about to kill us, but we were so ambivalent about giving up our home that we’d have driven a less obtuse realtor than ours quite insane. Our timing has not been the best, we realize, but that’s our way; we retired into The Recession, too. Anyway, all our sanities have been saved by the fact that there’s been only one “looker” in these five months. One. In a row.

I’d begun to think we could wait out our six month listing contract and wave the For Sale sign goodbye, never having to admit that we’d begun wavering the moment it showed up in our yard. I don’t know when we became so indecisive. It’s not how we’ve ever conceived of ourselves…tentative and irresolute, quite like old people…but we can’t seem to help it, so we’ve tried our best to conceal it. We felt our secret was safe, since it’s almost Christmas and we’ve only one more month on the contract; we’d ride this out and Mr. Remax would never know. Who looks at houses at Christmas? You’ve seen this coming by now: we got the call and there’s a showing scheduled today. The market, we’re informed, is picking up.

Who are these savage, callous house hunters?! Who would turn a sweet little elderly couple out of their own home on a cold day just before Christmas…at naptime!? I should be cleaning, spritzing the Happy Holiday Home air freshener, turning on all the lights…but, screw ‘em. I’ve lived in this house longer than I’ve ever lived anywhere. My children’s DNA lingers in the flooring. They could dangle a cash deal for the asking price, and I still wouldn’t sell to somebody who’d be thoughtless enough to make me an offer this week. I don’t expect my realtor, that home monger, to understand this, but I know that you will, Dear Reader. You know me too well to insist on rationality.

Of course, we’ve slightly considered the possibility that, with the The Dear Old Homeplace on the market, we might actually be called upon to move out at some point. We’ve been looking at those clever new quadraplex condos with two-sided fireplaces, walk-in showers, double ovens, granite countertops, two-car garages, and…the piece de resistance…pull-down stairs to the attic. Whoever thought these places up has their finger directly on the pulse of the pig in the python. Each unit has its own vinyl walled courtyard, and who could pass that up? Nobody’s windows open onto anybody else’s garage door. The exterior is a cross between stone façade tudor and Sears Craftsman Cottage. We could just about cover a lateral move, financially, and still pay the movers. But it’s a pod. We’d be one of The Pod People. My kids would be ready to take over ownership of the kayaks. We’d be formally marginalized.

Or, we could stay put. The neighborhood, which we thought promising, though short on trees, when we moved in, has gone down. The trees are so big they threaten the houses now, and some are being chopped back to ugly stumps to prevent storm damage. The mailboxes stand drunkenly along the street with their doors at half mast. The HOA gums its porridge. Our landscapes are mature-to-overripe, the hedges a thin layer of leaves over leggy, bare-branched skeletons. We’ve become a community of yard-owners who are either too old to cope or too young and busy to care. All the houses are two or three generations away from the original residents, so the pride of ownership has tarnished. And, by far the worst thing, the Yard Gnome People have taken over.

We know we’re not alone in this mess. We carry the banner for Boomers everywhere. An entire generation awaits our fate and watches to see how we handle this problem…to stay put or move on, to hunker down awaiting the inevitable squalor when we can no longer push a vacuum or wield a leaf blower, or to be stuck away into faux stone filing cabinets. And don’t try to cheer me up; I’m in no mood for it.

I have nightmares about waiting too long to leave this house, of postponing the clearing out and the clutter removal that a move would require. I see the house outliving me, see the EMS folks picking their way through the sections of fallen-in roof, across the warped and tilted floors to retrieve my carcass before the rats get at it. Visions of Marcia Davenport’s My Brother’s Keeper haunt me. In the worst of the dreams, someone props up a gnome or two in the yard out of misplaced pity.

I’ve been known to resort to hyperbole, but not this time. This time, clearly, my only choices are The Pod People vs. The Yard Gnome Ghetto. Send this post to everyone you know; maybe either our realtor or the rude jerks who’re out shopping for houses the very WEEK OF CHRISTMAS will take the hint.

Bah. Humbug.


P.S. Jo, honey, I’m fine. Really.

 [image: riverstonesubdivision.com/images/house_for_sa.., www.blavish.com/.../09/mooning-gnome-fun.jpg]