Deborah Forster

Attending house open-for-inspections is strange. You’re in the master bedroom just getting the gist of the room and a large man barges out of the bathroom leaving a cloud of odour and looking for the cellar. He doesn’t know about the cellar which a four-year-old couldn’t stand up in. You’re not the one to say anything, especially since you feel slight anger towards the others, making themselves at home in this house you might buy. It’s just territory really. In another room, kids are bellowing, ‘This is my room!’. Some couples are acting proprietorially, these are the low speakers with the buyers’ voices.
It’s hard to see yourself in another person’s house. Estate agents, dressed to the nines are potentially over-friendly. But the house always looks smaller than it did in the pictures. There are almost no cupboards in most houses. A fake TV is propped rakishly in a little corner of the family room. In the backyard, a woman stares into the sky. Maybe you are interrupting something. You are.
Australian houses have become the most expensive in the world (Monaco might be dearer but babysitting would be out.) If you live in Victoria, you will likely buy your new house at an auction in the street, rain, hail or shine, spending all your borrowed and saved money for the privilege of the neighbours’ mild entertainment.
Leaving your home is traumatic whoever or wherever you are, let alone for refugees. The British Somali poet Warsan Shire wrote in 2014:

Home
‘no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well’

I’d been told by a kid at school that our house was haunted and I half agreed with that. There had been a fire there once and while I wouldn’t say it looked preyed upon by spectres, it did seem inhabited by the hope of a better future. Sometimes, walking with Mum, we’d pick out houses we could ‘give’ each other. The houses Mum and I loved were dotted like secret crosses on the treasure map of our lives. I can close my eyes and see them in those long spindly streets. This was all long before Footscray was elevated and gentrified. But always for me, talking about houses is a way of showing love of order and shelter.
When I was nearly 18, I moved to a flat on Oxley Road, Hawthorn. I slept in that small flat with its diamond leadlight windows safely without the noise of a drunk rummaging in the kitchen for some tucker after another big night. The flat held me like a glove and I had never been so happy. I still live a couple of kilometres from there in a place I don’t want to leave. At night I hear crickets and cars, and trains as I drift into sleep, if sleep chooses to descend.
We have moved eight times in the 44 years of our married life and I still recall the joy that was scudding through me when we got to this one. How do you ever get so excited again? All houses have problems and at first, this one had its disappointments. It takes time to learn a property, from where the water leaks in, to where the draughts slink in. From the plants and their needs. But you always feel the journey of possibility plus all the joy of a north-facing backyard.
Our son was interested in how many animals we could bring. He brought them all and now his last acquisition is one old dog flecked with grey. We also have many lovely grandchildren. Time moves on. Time moves you to other thoughts. Wanting beauty is a big part of my problem. I’m so fond of the big tree all year, especially in early spring when it’s full of riotous fruit bats roosting at night, clicking and shoving each other. And then often in the afternoons when there’s sun, the rosellas arrive, it’s like a party. Their swinging green riotous bodies were like wind chimes, and their voices were like bells.
So now downsizing is bearing down on us. You just get to an age, I suppose. And the discussion keeps heading to the same point. When do you want to move on? Where can you go without changing the family completely? Is it the right time or do we wait till the kids have to clean out the whole house and pack us away to a nursing home? What sort of neighbourhood do you go to? Learning to age is like any other learning, except with aching joints.
I don’t want to move, but we all move on to support ourselves with the proceeds. Seeing the reality of your life as it really is in the moment, is not easy. Things are not what they were. We are not what we were. But we still see each other. There are always disagreements about perfection. Or even just close to good. But I suspect a big part of the hurdle is about leaving your home, moving into someone else’s and making it your own.