When I was growing up, the joke in my family was that we moved every time the vacuum cleaner bag was full. We hoped that discontent could be cured by the packing and unpacking of boxes and so we tried it often. The most consistent home of my childhood belonged to the Wilsons, distant cousins by marriage, who let me stay with them for long stretches while other family members traveled. It was from their snug house that I rode my bike the two blocks over to Whitland Avenue, where I live now.

Whitland is a wide, tree-lined street where the houses, which range from small to large, sit close together, united by a sidewalk. Sidewalks were and are a rarity in Nashville, and so I thought of them as a sign of great sophistication when I was young. I thought that no one could do better than to live on Whitland. Prescient child that I was, I turned out to be right.

Sometimes it seems in my life that I have made it exactly two blocks, from Brighton Road, where the Wilsons lived, over to Whitland. I have lived in a lot of places between those two stops, but one feels very much like my start, and the other, if I’m lucky, will be my end. I am in love with my house. It would be my final wish to have my ashes quietly deposited behind the garage.

I’ve been living here for nearly six years, which, at age 46, is the longest stretch I have ever spent at a single address. I got the house the way all the best real estate is secured: I married it. My husband, Karl, a doctor, bought it nine years before my arrival. He had been driving down the street one Saturday and passed a real estate agent he knew putting out a For Sale sign. He pulled his car to the curb and said he wanted to buy it. It’s that kind of house.

When we married, Karl thought I should sell my little two-bedroom brick house three blocks away, he would sell his brilliant house on Whitland, and we would find a place together. I disagreed. I was marrying for love, not property, but I would have been a fool to ...