“Are you renting or did you buy?”
The question followed almost immediately each time we introduced ourselves to someone at church. There was usually a weighty pause after “renting,” as if to say, “Of course, you’re renting. I know it’s ridiculous of me to ask, but I’ll try not to make assumptions by tacking on this last bit—did you buy?”
We always laughed it off when people asked us. We were so young, just out of college, with my husband in his first job and me at home with our first baby. It was natural for them to be skeptical that we had bought.
But these weren’t the times the well-meaning ward members were used to. It was 2008, the height of the housing crash. The real estate market of the Seattle suburbs was just as glutted as everywhere else in the country. And though the prices still looked ungodly compared to college rent, a few houses were just barely within reach, fruit on the lowest branches of the once-towering tree brought low by economic winter.
Even then, we could only reach them because George’s dad was willing to loan us the down payment from his retirement savings. Because we hadn’t had to take on much student debt because of scholarships. Because we were willing to live on almost nothing and clip coupons and run four separate transactions at the grocery store to stack deals. Because my husband’s job at Microsoft was stable and bound to go up in salary over time.
But other than that, it felt like something anyone could have done. We just had the good sense to do it.
That ward was my first introduction to playgroup.
I had learned in my first six months as a stay-at-home mother that it could be a lonely life. I had never been someone who needed a large group of friends—just one person to hang upside-down with off her bunk bed while reading our respective chapter books.
But as a stay-at-home mom in a new area, I had no one. I saw no one. Everyone in our ward in Springville had relatives nearby, I guess, so no one ever reached out to us in the short time we were there.
But now, I was surrounded by a group of other Microsoft spouses. Nearly half of the Elders’ Quorum worked there; there was even a ward carpool. Our first week in the ward, a friendly couple with two little boys invited us over for dinner. I would later find out her name was Michelle, and she held a playgroup at her house on Wednesday mornings.
We were all young, Mormon, stay-at-home mothers, yet we were also different from each other in specifics. For two hours, we would let our kids tear apart her house while we fed infants and talked about the weather, books, recommendations for doctors and dentists, why March was the saddest month, suggestions for dealing with the latest insane thing our three-year-olds were doing, our dreams for our lives once we were done with babies at home. Then we would sing the magic clean-up song that transformed our kids into cleaning robots (or at least got them to Pavolovian-ly put a couple of blocks into the basket without fighting) and head back to our own rhythms for the rest of the week.
Playgroup spawned other institutions, like Michelle’s annual murder mystery Halloween party, Alex and Xia’s Friday morning exercise group at the church gym, and Heather’s writing group. Most of us owned houses in the neighborhood. Whenever one of us was looking to buy, playgroup attendees would draw the ward boundary line for their real estate agents: “We will only consider houses in this area, nowhere else.” It was unthinkable to leave the place where we fit so well.
And yet we eventually did have to leave. George’s job moved to the main Microsoft campus, not easily reached by the express bus he was used to taking. A 20-minute commute on public transit had turned into a solo drive of 40 minutes at the best of times, and sometimes up to 90 minutes when traffic became particularly tangled. I also wanted to move to a different school district with a better program for the kids, and so in 2015, we began our house hunting again in Bellevue, 20 minutes south.
Again, playgroup found me.
I remember feeling lost at the park that first day, not knowing who among the crowd of mothers and grandmothers and children were the people I was supposed to meet there.
I remember the relief when someone I almost remembered from that first Sunday at church recognized me and pulled me over to where they had set up blankets and shade. She talked to me as if she knew I would be a friend though she knew nothing about me.
I remember the comfort of resting in the shade of the shared exhaustion of having multiple kids at home, the safety of knowing everyone knew exactly what you meant when you said you were struggling with potty training or biting or sleeping. These people were my safe harbor from the storms of motherhood.
I don’t remember how long it took me to learn all their names and stories. It seems now as if I had always known them.
That summer, it seemed a new family our age was moving into the ward every week. In my first year, they spontaneously threw a baby shower for Lauren, who had just moved in at 8 months pregnant. It wasn’t one of those awkward things where a visiting teacher was assigned to throw a baby shower, just a genuine outpouring of love for someone who was one of us just by being there.
I remember the first time I realized our family was not just lucky and full of good sense, but incredibly privileged.
At first, I had looked at our second home, an un-remodeled two-story built in 1969 as a pragmatic, practical choice. It looked like a military bunker with its two-story flat, uninspired shape and the flagpole in the yard running straight up the middle. I didn’t like the faded baby blue vinyl siding, but it had the four bedrooms that we wanted to fit our growing family. The yard was tiny, neglected, and overgrown, but it was in the right school district. This house was within a mile of my husband’s job.
When we were house shopping, my husband was disappointed that the move-in-ready houses built this century were beyond our grasp, but we had made our peace with what we had found. The market in the Seattle suburbs had recovered to its usual state, with few homes on the market and everything selling in a weekend. But it seemed typical to us, and we had found three houses to offer on that weekend and actually been accepted by two of them. We felt lucky to have some choice as to which home we wanted.
I thought this house was an unextravagant choice, one that carefully balanced our needs and wasn’t too self-indulgent or debt-ridden.
Though slightly smaller than our previous one, this home was still big enough to host a playgroup. I volunteered to hold a St. Patrick’s Day party for all the little kids at our usual Wednesday at 10 am meeting time. I beamed amidst the stringing of rainbow fruit loop necklaces and the refilling of small plates with green foods. There was enough room for everyone to fit and for kids to move around and play in smaller groups, while the mothers could congregate around the matching couches we’d finally been able to afford. I felt that although our house might not be stylish, it was enough.
As the party broke up and moms scooped their kids up or shoved them into shoes, one sister turned to me at the door. “Your house is so nice! I wish we could afford one.”
I tried to settle the awkwardness of the remark with social niceties: yes, buying a house was such a big step, and how much work there was still to do with this one, and I was sure they’d be able to get there someday.
She waved me off with an annoyed gesture. “No, you don’t understand. We could never afford a house like this one.”
I could feel the expression of dismay on my face, though I tried to hide it. Her family hadn’t seemed much different from my own. I knew her husband wasn’t in tech, but . . . . “Really?” I said.
“Yes, really,” she said firmly, then gave a grim smile before turning to walk her two kids out to the car.
Two years later, our playgroup began to hollow out.
In the summer, we would often meet at a local park with waterfront on Lake Sammamish. The kids dug and splashed while all the moms guarded picnics from eager flocks of crows. It was the place I felt most content in Bellevue. Growing up in Utah, the beach was a far-away dream. Here, we could be there in less than 15 minutes from when the idea first occurred to us.
Every week, someone would announce, “We got a house!” Even the people who weren’t looking. There was simply no time between finding a house and snatching one up to let anyone else know what you were doing. Hovering between the shade of the trees and the warmth of the sand, we’d hear what their new plans were.
And those plans were always outside of the ward.
Rebecca was moving to North Bend, 40 miles out through the forested canyons. We were all, of course, so happy for her because her landlord had been about to raise rent to a truly ghastly number. We’d communally debated with her the virtues of staying where they were versus trying to find somewhere more affordable—within the ward, of course. But such a place didn’t exist except in the ideal version of Bellevue in our dreams. So we were all so happy that she could find somewhere with space for her fighting kids to have separate rooms, even though we were sad to lose her as our Relief Society president and Christmas sing-a-long instigator.
Then another was moving to Kirkland, near my old ward. And another to Bothell. Lauren, the young mother we’d held the baby shower for had found an unexpected condo in Sammamish, just over the ward boundary lines. But we’d still be sharing the same building, so at least we had that. We’d totally see each other, and she’d still come to playgroup, wouldn’t she?
But it felt like my safe harbor was slowly being washed out like a sandcastle built too close to the lapping waves.
The next spring was a lonely one for playgroup. I would show up faithfully at the designated park each week. Sometimes one or two other sisters would show up, but often there was no one. It was difficult to get the momentum we’d once had with six or seven women coming every week.
I’d sit under the tall trees of the Pacific Northwest playground and watch my one child left at home run gleefully all over the play structure which she had all to herself. As I pushed her on the swings, I’d think about why there was no one there for her to play with. All the young couples who had moved in at the same time as us—they had been renting. They needed more space for their kids. They couldn’t afford to buy in this expensive suburb of the Emerald City.
I couldn’t blame them.
Outside of playgroup, the streets of our neighborhood were deserted during the day. Few houses had families with kids in them, and most of those families had their young kids in day care because both parents worked. The streets were clean, black, and silent, lined with empty lawns.
There was one family around the corner with a stay-at-home dad, and our daughters would play together whenever they could. But if they were busy, that was it.
When the pandemic hit, the loneliness became more profound and solid. Why were we here? There was no one here for us. Our family was adrift in its own little boat, constantly springing leaks and bailing water with no one to joke with about how hard it was to keep afloat, because everyone else had sailed away.
When my husband’s new job with Zillow went permanently remote, there were no ties holding us to the area. Most of the people I would miss had already moved on. So we raised our anchor and set a course back to Utah, hoping to find a new safe harbor there.
Names have been fictionalized to protect privacy.
Liz Busby is a writer of creative non-fiction and speculative fiction. She also writes book reviews and other literary criticism, particularly about the intersection between Mormonism and science fiction/fantasy. She graduated from BYU in 2008 with a BA in English and a minor in chemistry. For the last twelve years, Liz has been a stay-at-home mother. When she’s not being clamored for and climbed over, she enjoys long-distance running and playing video games. She lives in Highland, UT, with her husband George and her four children.
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