Keeping Up with the Jones'

 They tell you not to compare. Do not measure your life against the neighbor’s. Do not chase the illusion of status. Wise words. And mostly ignored by anyone with a pulse.

But the one luxury I dream of is not a shiny car or a gadget that glows in the dark. I want land. And a home rooted in that land. A mansion, yes, because why lie about the scale of the vision? Something built to last. Something that cannot be folded into a suitcase or lost the moment a visa expires.

Picture this. A wide stretch of earth that belongs to my family name. Soil that remembers the footsteps of children now grown. Trees that rise taller long after I am gone. A house with a high roof and windows that pull in the morning sun instead of shutting it out. A library filled with the books I wrote and the ones that wrote me. A workshop where tools rest not in transit cases but on familiar walls. A kitchen where laughter outnumbers plates. A long table where every seat has a story, and none are borrowed.

A place where coming home does not require crossing continents.

After decades spent moving between countries, working in borrowed spaces, and adapting to rules written by others, I crave permanence. Not for vanity. For identity. I want my children and grandchildren to know there is a patch of earth tied to their name. A literal ground on which they can stand and say, This is ours. This is where we belong.

Some call that luxury. I call it recovery. Recovery from the rootlessness that comes from living a life of motion. Every choice that made me resilient also made me untethered.

A mansion may sparkle to outsiders, but for me the shine is in the legacy. Bricks and mortar that outlive the man who paid for them. A home that does not vanish when the contract ends. A marker in the world that says our family thread continues here.

There is nothing wrong with modesty. But there is also nothing wrong with wanting the gift I could not give myself. A sense of place. A place that cannot be taken away.

If someday I manage to build that house on that land, it will not be to keep up with the Joneses. It will be to give the Lemkes a home base after generations of wandering.

And if that is a luxury, then I believe it is a worthy one.

I write

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