By Christina Collie
SARAH and I met in 2020. She’s not so much a “who” but a “what,” and her name comes from a sci-fi tv show called “Eureka” that ran from 2006-2012.
In the show, SARAH stands for “Self-Actuated Residential Automated Habitat,” a house-of-the-future outfitted with an AI consciousness that controls everything from food service to security communications. In my life, though, SARAH is the lovingly ironic name for my 100-year-old Flint home – which I can assure you has no AI frills.
But the real story here isn’t where SARAH got her name, it’s how we came to find each other.
In 2016, my grandmother, Rita, a master seamstress and local landlord who walked the Crim so many times that I joked that she was in better shape than me, became very ill. She went to Hurley, and we didn’t think she’d be coming home.
Luckily, her significant other – “Grandpa” to me and “my Bob” to her – was able to get her transferred to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. There, my grandmother was patched up enough to go home after being hospitalized for almost two months.
Over the next few years her condition declined to the point where she needed to start dialysis. Eventually, she had to go three times a week for about three hours each session. I would drive up from my home in Detroit to visit and try to help out with her care.
Thanks to the constant construction on I-75, sometimes it would take a couple hours just to get to her place in Swartz Creek, especially if I got stuck driving up during rush hour traffic (which was often).
And, since I usually had to get to work the next morning, that delay meant I’d only be able to visit for an hour or two before needing to leave again.
It would break my heart every time she said “you just got here!” while she implored me to stay the night or at least a bit longer.
So, in 2019, I decided to move closer to my grandma and her Bob.
I started researching homes in the Genesee County area, and as chance would have it, my artist booth was next to an artist from Flint at an event that spring.
I got to chatting with the artist’s mom, who was helping her out for the day, and my interest was piqued when she told me about all of the great things going on in Flint and how much her daughter loved living here. From there, I began researching the city a bit more and in November Crain’s Detroit Business issued a special edition on Flint. It focused on the start-ups and organizations helping to make Flint a city on the rise.
By then I had started working with a realtor in the area.
The system went like this: I would search listings online or sort through the ones my realtor sent me; I’d let him know which places I was interested in seeing in person; and then I’d drive up to Flint to take a look, usually with my dad in tow.
I knew I wanted to be close to downtown, but I didn’t know zip codes to be able to clarify exactly what that meant. (Despite growing up in Grand Blanc for a short time as a kid and having family in the area most of my life, my exposure to Flint had been pretty limited – a trip to Auto World, a few concerts at the Capitol while in high school.)
Many of the homes I found online were around Kettering University, both too far from where I really wanted to be and in need of more love and repairs than I was prepared to offer.
Then one fateful January day, my dad and I were having lunch at Blackstone’s before heading out to meet my realtor. As we were finishing up, the manager came over, and we got to chatting about my house hunt. He asked if I’d looked through East Village Magazine, as it sometimes had properties listed. I wasn’t familiar with EVM then, but he told me it was also just a great source of info on what was happening around the city, so I grabbed a copy.
After another disappointing day of walk-throughs, I started flipping through the magazine that night. While there weren’t really any places listed that looked promising in the classifieds, what I did find was the zip code for the magazine’s office – and by extension where I knew I wanted to live in Flint!
Many viewings later, I narrowed my search down to two fantastic late 1920s homes that were overflowing with character and charm.
One was move-in ready, while the other (SARAH) looked like it hadn’t been loved for many years. I put an offer in on the former because it was the rational thing to do, but after the home inspection I couldn’t help feeling like I was making a mistake.
It wasn’t that anything specific came up at the inspection, but rather because SARAH’s pull on me was already strong. Despite the house’s nasty, peeling 70s paint; unattached gutters; broken doors and windows; and lights dangling from the ceiling by fraying wires, I saw and felt so much potential in SARAH and her two-car garage – perfect for an artist’s needs – that I couldn’t shake the feeling that we belonged together.
In the background, of course, was the fact that according to NPR and foreign news media (where I get most of my news in order to keep myself sane), COVID-19 was hitting European and Asian countries hard, and common sense told me that it was already here and spreading. My biggest fear was that once it hit the U.S. like it was those other countries, my choice to move would be gone. I ended up stopping the sale on the first home and putting in an offer on SARAH instead.
My closing date was the end of March, literally the day everything in the state shut down. With paperwork in-hand, I spent 4 hours debating whether or not I was making the right choice – the thought going through my head, “Well, how long could this shutdown last? A week, two weeks?”
I bit the bullet and signed on the dotted line.
Though I moved to Flint to care for my grandmother, COVID meant I basically became a hermit in order to prevent getting her or Bob sick. It was awful taking her to her dialysis appointments and not being able to go in and sit with her, but I was grateful to even spend the time in the car with her.
Once things started opening back up, I would don full personal protective equipment and go in and sit with her again. My grandmother and Bob were able to come visit a few times for dinner, and I can’t put into words how pleased I was to have her – the woman who decorated and maintained the rentals she and my grandfather owned together for so many years prior to her illness – sing SARAH’s praises on those evenings.
My grandmother passed in 2022, after finally convincing Bob to let her stop dialysis, and then sadly Bob passed unexpectedly this year.
While I miss them both every day, and SARAH has become a bit of a never-ending project, I wouldn’t change a thing about my choice.
I am so grateful to East Village Magazine for connecting me with not only SARAH, but with the wonderful community and friends who I’ve made since my move here to Flint.
This article also appears in East Village Magazine’s October 2024 issue.
