Sometimes one of the grand kids will ask a tough question. A couple of weeks ago I was driving Audrey somewhere when I waved at a neighbor walking down the street. Audrey wanted to know who he was and where he was going.
“That’s Dr Faith. He’s walking over to his rental house next door to Jill’s.”
“What’s a rental house?”
To this second grader the concept of a rental house was difficult to grasp. Audrey doesn’t live in a rental house, neither does Grandpa. The whole discussion carried us for the rest of the drive to wherever we were going. I loved every minute of it.
When I was nine we lived at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. Louie was serving in the army at the time. There are several stories to tell about that summer. One of the stories involves a question like the one Audrey asked about rental property.
Our house in New Mexico
Louie was driving me somewhere, perhaps to swimming lessons at the pool. We lived in enlisted housing, a circle of two bedroom duplexes in the desert. In one sense, it was a homogeneous neighborhood. Everyone worked for the military. Income levels were similar. Enlisted personnel even tended to be of similar ages, Louie would have been about thirty that summer. Just about everyone was married, as the single guys lived in the barracks or in town.
Life was pretty comfortable for me, and probably for the rest of the family, too. Linn, Eric and I shared one bedroom, with Louie and Grace in the front bedroom. There was a living room and kitchen. I don’t recall any other rooms. The whole house would have been under a thousand square feet. The front yard had a nice tree with a swing. Every other house on the circle looked just like ours.
That day in the car with Louie, I, as a nine-year-old, saw something that seemed a little out of the ordinary. So, just like Audrey, I asked the question.
“That couple looks different, Dad. Why?” Continue reading
