The plan

Get married
Buy house
Start and finish master?s degree
Have two kids

Your wedding was small and beautiful. Even your parents admit you planned a lovely event, although you still have to stop your mother from doing her usual postmortem of how she could have planned things better. Your mother-in-law, fresh from the end of chemotherapy, cooed over your best friend?s five-week-old baby.
You and your husband live in your separate condos at first; you?re 35 and he?s 41, and you?re both settled in your own spaces. But as soon you buy a house, a fixer-upper with 100-year-old painted bricks and 40-year-old avocado green appliances, you pack and move and sell your old place in between coursework for your degree.
Your father, who is also your business partner and a real estate broker, wants to know why you need such a big house. He really means, ?Why aren?t you living closer to us"? but you explain that the house has five bedrooms: a room for you and your husband to sleep in, a room each for an office, and two rooms for kids. Both your parents are surprised. ?Aren?t you too old to have kids"? You explain that all your friends had kids in their mid to late 30s, but your parents only know Indian families, and good Indian kids get married in their 20s. Your father persists. ?But won?t the child be mentally deficient" Won?t it take some kind of medical miracle for you to have a baby"?
The things you didn’t know
The plan is to lower the basement floor t...