We arrived into Westfield about four days before my new job was supposed to start, essentially homeless. We drove around the area looking to see what it was like. There were a bunch of subdivisions and a few apartments. We searched online and even called some realtors to see what kind of rentals were available. We really didn’t want to move back into an apartment, but we would if necessary.
Unfortunately, there really didn’t seem to be much available in our price range, which was cheap. We started driving through the surrounding small towns looking for rent signs. We found very few and most of them were out of our price range. We were surprised, in the 5 years we were in Florida, the price of rent had skyrocketed.
We could barely afford a studio or one bedroom apartments in the old run down looking complexes. Even if we wanted to move into an apartment, there weren’t many available. We were about to rent a little house in downtown Cicero that smelt of dog and slightly out of our price range, when we got lucky.
James was talking to Bert, our old roommate and friend, who was living in Minnesota at the time. His fiance, Kat, had family with a rental house just north of Tipton. He made some phone calls for us and as luck would have it it was currently available. He set up a time for us to look at the house.
We drove out to the house the next day. It was a bit further north than we expecting, but it was a cute little two bedroom house that sat on approximately 2 acres of land. The kitchen gave that 1940- 1950’s wood country kitchen vibe. They seemed to be nice people, they didn’t care about our ferrets and the price was right, $500 a month. We would be able to afford rent easily even if James didn’t find a new job right away.
James and I thought it would be a great temporary place to live. We signed a year lease, but there were no stipulations if we wanted to get out of the lease early, since we were friends of their only granddaughter.
I still remember them making a big deal about giving us a receipt for our cash deposit, because it would be important for their records when we moved out in five years they joked. James and I laughed stating we hoped not to be renting in five years. After all, this place was just temporary.
We lived in that house for 7 years. We never did see that $500 deposit when we moved out. The house and landlord arrangement were at times awful, but some of the most important times and best memories happened in that house or while we lived there.
But back in August 2010, that house became home. I would start my new job with a permanent address and we would never have to mooch lodgings off our friends. It was a 35 minute drive to my new job, but I used to drive at least that long to Citibank and be in the car even longer on the way home due to traffic.
A Mother's Special Calling 