What Do You Really Own?

Minimalist millennials and the allure of the 'burbs.

I’m writing this from a three-storey historic home in the suburbs. It’s my third stay here in the past few months. Every time my friend and her husband go away, I trade my cramped kitchen for one with two sinks, a double-paned fridge, and six-burner stove; my splintering floor for shiny hardwood; my single television for four. Instead of staring at the ceiling every night from the bathtub in my windowless bathroom, I gaze at the silhouette of the forested valley behind the house as I float in their hot tub.

Last night, I noticed one of the lights on the side of the neighbour’s house flickering while soaking in the backyard. Convinced my mom haunts me through lights, I studied the flashing, realizing that it had a calculated pattern. I thought of Parasite, the anti-capitalist movie in which the father, trapped in the basement of a mansion, attempts to communicate Morse code through a flickering light. I thought too of how the poorer families in that story leech off of the wealthy famil…