This Old House

The tarot card reader was the first to tell me we’d have to sell the house. We’d been thinking of ways to mitigate the cashflow problem spurred on by the back-to-back WGA and SAG strikes. Our income was dependent upon the entertainment industry making television shows and production had ground to a halt. One solution was to lease our home in Pacific Palisades, an upscale Mayberry-meets-Hamptons coastal community, and rent in a less expensive, hipper part of town. It could be fun, we reasoned, to be closer to cool restaurants and vintage thrift stores for a year or two. Our kids, ages 18 and 22, would probably love it.

My spiritual advisor didn’t like that plan.

“Just sell the house,” she said in a cavalier manner I did not appreciate.

“Is that you or the cards talking?” I snapped.

She reshuffled the deck. Same answer.

“Sorry,” she said with the empathy of a waiter delivering the news that they’ve sold out of the daily special. “The boys are doing great, though.”

The boys are great, and that’s what I tried to focus on as we celebrated their respective graduations from college and high school while bleeding money. The strikes had dragged on for almost a year, but even after agreements were reached it wasn’t back to work as usual. Studios are not factories. Creating scripted entertainment takes time. Though my husband had been steadily employed as a showrunner for years, we didn’t have the kind of “fuck you” money that writers made in the 90’s and early aughts before streaming came along. Networks routinely produced 22 episodes per season back then; now twelve, ten, and even eight-episode seasons were becoming the norm.

Of course, we couldn’t have known that when we fell in love with the charming 1941 English Tudor in the fall of 2015. The fixer-upper with great bones and a huge back yard reminded us both of our grandparents houses back East. It had been occupied by the same family for over 50 years and had a tiny door for the milkman and a telephone table in the hallway, miraculously unmarred by any bad 1980s additions. This gem was located in an area that people in middle America envision when they think of Beverly Hills - swimmin’ pools and movie stars (and the occasional hedge fund manager). My dream of living closer to the ocean was within reach.

I’d been lukewarm about our first house on Malcolm Avenue in Rancho Park; I’d felt pressured into buying it because we had a baby on the way. But over the years, through countless family movie nights, themed birthday parties, art projects, and light saber battles, we had imprinted ourselves on it. It was the only home our kids had ever lived in, and they didn’t want to leave. I was the one who pushed for the house on Sunset. It ticked all the boxes of our first home with even better walkability. Plus, it was so close to the beach you could smell the salt air. Along with our lowball offer I wrote a heartfelt note to the sellers promising not to change the house too much. Within a year of turning the garage into a music studio/teen hangout, it began to feel like home. Our house became the site of epic Fourth of July barbecues and holiday parties and a beautiful pollinator garden tended with love. It was Land of O-Z headquarters (a hyphenate of the first letters of my husband’s last name and mine), a real place during the pandemic when so much around us (schools, offices) had become virtual.

Fast forward to a few weeks after the shittiest tarot card reading ever. Our business manager gave his own reading, and it wasn’t good news. As I sat in his office in tears, he tried to remain upbeat. At least we’d made a good investment; there are so many people in Hollywood who don’t have that cushion. If you’re wondering how bad it is, check out this L.A. Times article and this one in Harpers on the state of the industry. At least we have pensions, even if we’re a decade too young to use them. He reminded us that we were both healthy, that things could be so much worse. A house is just brick and mortar; a house is not a person. What matters is family. The thing is, we’d imprinted ourselves on this house, too, and it on us. We’d made necessary upgrades but kept our promise not to change too much. Would another family be careful stewards of our house, or would a developer knock it down and put up an ugly McMansion in its place?

The kids took the news in stride. One said he wished we could pick up the house and move it to a less expensive area. The other said we probably shouldn’t have bought it in the first place. Woulda-coulda-shoulda. If I had a time machine I’d do things differently. But I do not. That’s part of the deal. You make decisions based on your best information at the time. We couldn’t predict the pandemic, the strikes, the contraction of the TV business. I thought our kids needed the personal attention that private school offered. That was only half-true. I’d love to have some of that tuition money right now. If I’d had a bigger career, we wouldn’t have to sell the house. But I also wouldn’t have been the mom that I wanted and needed to be. A psychic once told me I’d have career success later in life. I now have the opportunity to lean into that.

While working hard, I’ll also have the chance to confront my issues around safety, security, and permanence. Our two houses are located at the top of Google’s safest neighborhoods in L.A. list, both in terms of crime and air quality. I worry about being trapped in a hot unwalkable area, with a landlord who puts Roundup on the lawn, and a million other small and not so small things. I hate the impermanence of renting even as I know that we are all renters, that you can acquire houses and fill them with nice things, but you can’t take any of it with you. Our son Maxwell’s art school thesis touched on this topic. His two primary art forms, graffiti and tattooing, are by their very nature impermanent. Live performance – a space where our son Harry truly shines – is also temporary. Sure, you can record a play or concert, but the beauty of theatre is experiencing it in the moment. And so, here we are, adding our beloved home to the list of things in life that don’t last forever.