My parents bought a foreclosed farmhouse during the 2008 recession. For a decade afterward, we made hourlong weekly trips from Kentucky, where we lived, to the farm, which is in Indiana. My parents spent long days there renovating the termite-ridden 1970s farmhouse while I played in the fields or read in the car. I was in middle school when they bought it, too young to question their motivation for spending weekends toiling over a house in the middle of nowhere…
Essay available from the New York Times, in English and Chinese.