A Place I Would Buy for My Family

“A place I would buy for my family”

I could not believe it. I’M buying a new home. I had the security of home ownership. I could have remodeled or improved our home and had it for my older years, but the house in Beacon Hill, no longer represented my concept of myself.

The house, a tri-level four-bedroom, partially red-brown brick covering, was perfect for my family. Two of my children were in their own place and another leaving for college in a couple of months. Our home had a front lawn in need of grooming with rockery and flowers in the middle of the lawn. There was rockery and purple, white, and yellow flowers on the side of the carport. The back yard had three large fruit trees, one full of red Bing cherries, mostly out of reach, one with partially filled unripe green and yellow pears, and a large, but no longer producing, filbert nut tree. My pride was a beautiful large poinsettia bush in the yard that was located by the dining room window.

The first night, I remember sleeping on my lovely dark green shag rug. The kids felt it was ugly, but I loved it.

During a visit to my home, a male friend remarked how much he liked the home. “Delores, this is the kind of place I would buy for my family.”

I felt he wondered how I, a single black woman with six children, could get such a place. That statement made me love my place even more. I still feel pride remembering being able to have such a lovely home and area for my children.

This is so timely for a lot of us aging out of bigger cities. And your position as a sole head of a large household as a single, black woman is impressive. A single parent for some periods of time I didn’t come close to being able to purchase a home with my own credit and cash. Women like you were my model for what should be possible!

Delores Davis is a lifelong Washington resident and retired UW Hospital medical Social Worker. (Comment from Ariele: A really good story, especially as we just celebrated the day for supporting women receiving equal pay!)

SHARING STORIES is a weekly column for and about the 50 plus crowd living in the Puget Sound region. Send your stories and photos to ariele@comcast.net. Tell local or personal stories; discuss concerns around aging and other issues; share solutions, good luck, and reasons to celebrate; poems are fine too. Pieces may be edited or excerpted. We reserve the right to select among pieces. Photos are always a plus and a one-sentence bio is requested (where you live, maybe age or career, retired status, etc.).

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