After several weeks of house hunting, our family identified our top two prospective homes. The first was “Log Cabin” – which looked nothing like a log cabin, but had stylish, rustic wooden beams under the porch roof.  The second was “Yellow House,” the lemon yellow craftsman style,  just two blocks away from “Log Cabin.”

We saw “Log Cabin” first. I really liked it.  I liked the fact the kitchen had windows on the front of the house – perfect for sitting at the breakfast table with coffee and a newspaper, watching the neighborhood come to life. The formal dining room was open through the second story and wrapped by the upstairs hallway with a gorgeous (and rustic) chandelier – the kind that always get shot down in western films. And then there was the basement.  The basement was actually finished, and all it needed was the addition of a kitchen to become a fully independent apartment.

At the time, we had Kevin in tow.  Since we (K & I were engaged at the time)  were going to be broke, college student, newlyweds, my parents were going to toss us a giant bone and lease us their basement suite for peanuts. They also informed us that they would be locking us out of the upstairs. Perfect set up? We thought so. Today, I maintain that Kevin and I were both more enamored with the idea of playing house than actually being married and in it for the long haul together, but we had a lot of fun playing house hunters and imagining where we would put all of the furniture we saw window shopping at Ikea.

The five of us – my parents, brother, Kevin, and I – left “Log Cabin” and stood on the sidewalk outside talking. And then the neighbor came out.  She was an unkempt woman, with the haggard look of a chain smoker, and she carried a child under one arm and a cigarette in her free hand. She stuck said child in the swing that was somehow suspended from the front porch, and smoked the cigarette down to her fingers. When she was done, she tossed the cigarette butt into our front yard.

That was the moment we decided that none of us wanted to live in “Log Cabin.”  What was next?  Beer cans in the backyard? Garbage blowing down the street? And it isn’t a far stretch to imagine how obnoxious that child would grow up to become.  In about 10 seconds, “Log Cabin” went from home to bottom of the list.    We didn’t want to live in a neighborhood like that.

Fast forward five minutes….

“Yellow House” stood tall and proud on the end of a more established street.  It was the last of the houses our builder had made; most of the others had been lived in and loved for a year already. Talk about curb appeal – “Yellow House” looked like small town America, shrunk down, packaged in sunshine, and dropped into our laps to fight the homesickness we were already feeling.  Inside, “Yellow House” was lighter, airier, and it had better carpet. At one point, Mogo, Peter, Kevin, and I lay on the floor, staring up the ceiling, perfectly relaxed for the first time all day.

That was the moment we decided that “Yellow House” would be home.

“Yellow House” had an unfinished basement, which just escalated the game of house hunters that K and I were playing.  We could pick wall placement, paint colors, kitchen cabinets, flooring… And we did. Kev and I sat on the rough, dusty stairs and decided to paint our living room blue and decorate with chocolate highlights. When my parents bought “Yellow House,” it took Kevin and I less than 24 hours after unpacking the moving truck to go down to the basement with sidewalk chalk to draw everything. And when I say everything, I do mean everything. I think we even had couch placement sketched out. Juvenile, I know; this is why we never got married.

The point  I’m trying to make is that “Yellow House” was instantly home. I can only share my experience of falling in love with our house and what it originally meant to me. Since then, “Yellow House” has become somewhere I’ve put down roots.  It was my sanctuary and place of solitude when it became clear that K and I would never survive long enough to buy a candle at Ikea, let alone a couch.  It has been a place of joy and laughter after the hardest period in our family’s life.  It has been home when everything else felt foreign.

“Yellow House” is my home, and I love it.

Naturally, I’m enraged that I left the house yesterday afternoon and walked directly into a cloud of marijuana smoke.  Three guys – who don’t live anywhere near “Yellow House,” as I’ve never seen their blue truck before – stood passing joints in broad daylight.

They were three of those guys. You know, the ass clowns that think they amount to something if they wear black “tapout” shirts and baseball caps and swagger around like they’re hot stuff.  I have a strong aversion to all things “tapout,” but yesterday I was so infuriated by their snarky personas and pot consumption that I wanted to put a brick through their truck. (I didn’t;  I don’t throw things at boys anymore.)

As I’ve processed what I saw, I’m beginning to understand what really upset me. It’s just like the woman that lives next to “Log Cabin.”  No respect for the neighborhood. Our neighborhood truly is a beautiful place to live.   Yesterday, the freakish wind carried garbage from the neighboring construction site and littered it across our lawn, and, already looking less than best, the boys and their cheap kicks just added to the tacky, white trash ambiance of the moment.  That’s not what I want.

What’s next?  We’ve already had a couple of neighbors drunk and brawling in the night. Now, it’s escalated to drug use in broad daylight. Are we looking at drug deals next?   And the violence that accompanies a thriving drug trade?

I’m unwilling to let our neighborhood become some degraded, shady part of town. Still, I  feel powerless to stop it. How do you stop it without going all Gran Torino on kids like that?   But if you consider what Malcolm Gladwell wrote – and you should consider and accept everything the man writes (almost) - you cannot let the broken window syndrome get out of control. In a neighborhood where any petty crime occurs, it has been shown that crime rates steadily accelerate. It has to stop.