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A Space Apart

A curious feeling swept over me when I realized the Trader Joe’s cashier scanning my tempeh once sat on my toilet and fucked in my bedroom.

Like most new tenants, I’d spent the first week in my apartment receiving former residents’ mail—briefly scanning their names, shuffling the junk into overflowing recycling bins, and nosily assessing the heft of more serious parcels before shoving them back into the outgoing mail slot. Her name was one of four I’d come to know in my very brief tenure as an addressee reviewer. And then, quite suddenly, here she was: the person matching the standardized black-and-white typeface printed across coupon packets.

Her nametag was chipped at the edges and hanging askew. She smiled, waiting patiently as I wrestled from my laden basket a burrito and box of chocolate.

“Nothing like stress eating after signing a new lease,” I chuckled, waiting for the card reader to cooperate.

“Oh, where’d you move?” she asked, mechanically disinterested.

“Just across the street.”

“It’s a pretty good complex,” she said, her tone changing slightly as she ferried my groceries across the scanner. “I’m moving a few floors down, into another unit with my boyfriend.”

Where I’m from in Alabama, this would’ve been a revelatory exchange, a gateway encounter to a budding friendship. But in Seattle, I already knew there’d be no neighborly invitation to get to know one another tacked on as a conversational addendum. It was a simple, matter-of-fact observation.

“Small world,” I said, smiling back.

“Yep. Have a nice day.”

Days later, when my bathroom sink and shower drains began backing up, I imagined it was her long blonde hair contorted into amorphous, matted blobs that clogged the pipes.

***

My apartment was dark, save some light from the blue television screen—the conclusion of “Annihilation.” Around me, plants listed lethargically, while others hurtled into an even more obvious state of unstoppable decay—my beloved, mammoth African violets rotted shades of what they’d been back at Gay Gardens. Even my most prized geranium—once over six feet tall—shrunk markedly, its tendrils browning, its sinewy body stiffening and breaking down. As each floral charge withered despite my best efforts, I mentally reframed their demise as altruistic entropy—unburdening me of their care, pushing me onward. Even as they diminished, a sense of resilience continued to grow inside of me. I scanned the apartment, regarding it more for the necessary aspects it afforded—shelter, security—than its ebbing decorative vitality. Naked brass screw-ends pocked the wall, free of their framed charges, and corners sat shadowed, devoid of their previously appointed furniture.

“I’m pretty sure it’ll fit right there along the back,” I said, arcing my arm across the pickup’s deep bed, whilst watching the foreboding sky, willing it not to open up.

Moments later, the sideboard I’d lovingly restored a decade before on the stoop of my first apartment shuddered down the road—its heavy, beveled mirror angled upward, reflecting the graying sky.

The day prior, I’d bid farewell to my beloved Mission-style dish cabinet as it made its way to a farm in Oregon. When I walked back into the apartment, I followed the cabinet’s vestigial trail of white paint flecks to a bag of fresh produce and herbs—the bartered portion of the cabinet’s cost.

A few nights later, my eyes watered as I gently, methodically, set down the basket of remaining Fiestaware into the woman’s cigarette smoke-saturated car. As I nudged one additional bag into the floorboard, I recalled the rush of adrenaline I’d felt over a decade before when I ripped off the tightly wrapped, yellowed newspaper to reveal the brilliant turquoise plates and saucers—the striking colors gleaming in the scarce, dusty light of my parents’ attic.

Memories are much lighter than things, which can easily transform into beautiful traps.

***

We’re all renters—of life, space, objects. And yet, through social conditioning and mental self-subterfuge, many of us spend an inordinate amount of time convincing ourselves it’s entirely normal to expend our lives paying off debts incurred by attempting to own something we never will.

Downsizing my life over the past six months was an exercise in self-care and disciplined boundary-making. I pushed myself further than I ever thought I could—both in terms of acknowledging how little I needed to thrive, and the extent to which I could, with nearly surgical precision, emplace necessary boundaries to maintain my emotional and physical health. And through it all, I strived to acknowledge the privileges I carried in being able to do so.

For me, self-care has involved introspective reflection, study, and understanding of my place in the world: how I got to where I am, by which I mean what oppressive systems have I benefitted from over the course of my life, and what steps I can take each day to dismantle those same institutions and systems and restructure them to be equitable and sustainable. And in so doing, I’ve had to remind myself that I will always be a student—learning, failing, and working harder to get it right the next time.

Never did I expect a year to make such a difference—to be in a place where I’d have enough mental clarity to better understand the intersections of my interests in social justice, ecological sustainability, and health and wellbeing.

***

Adjusting my glasses, I perused the tiny panes of potential matches—assessing perceived flaws, swiping on the ones I thought would be incompatible, and jotting down notes. Each had its merits, but I knew what I wanted; I could wait for the right one. Good bones were a must, and any hint of faulty undercarriage was grounds for an outright dismissal: slipping transmission, pervasive rust, overtaxed motor. Unlike airbrush-happy Tinder users, buses had very little ability to hide their blemishes.

Thoroughly unimpressed, I darkened my phone screen and set it on my bedside table, and then reviewed my latest musings. Across the worn, tattered pages, I reread the plan I began devising in the Olympic Peninsula’s mist-covered woods months ago—to convert a school bus into a tiny home. I’ve dubbed it, “Not the worst plan.”

Feeling the rising anxiety and doubt, I took a breath.

You can do something this monumental. You already have. 

Selling nearly everything I had of value helped free me from crushing credit card debt, untether me from the strangling grasp of materialism, and add a modest contribution to a long-empty savings account.

In downsizing even further over the coming year and a half, I intend to push myself into uncomfortably uncharted territory as I prepare to live within a much tinier, more mobile footprint. My goal is to live as efficiently and sustainably as possible, have a home that is mine and not the bank’s, and mobilize it so I can move wherever, like a hermit crab. Ultimately, I want to operate on the periphery of this hyper-consumerist, capitalistic system as much as possible, to live more freely.

The hardest parts are yet to come, but I’m tired of paying exorbitant rent for a place I don’t like and that isn’t reflective of me, that limits my creativity. And as thrilling as it can be to live in a thrumming city, I’ve grown weary of being surrounded by the droves of closed-off shell people scuttling to and fro, heads angled down—their entire worlds seemingly confined to their phone screen. I want to look up, toward the tree-lined horizon, whenever possible.

My plan is a wholly different re-imagining of what I thought my life would look like by my mid-thirties. And while I never expected to become an increasingly tattooed gay with a penchant for wearing loud sweaters living in a skoolie alongside an overly anxious Chihuahua, I’m learning to love the idea.

There are so many steps in between the here-and-now and the there-and-done. But having my atypical goal post set far afield from traditional expectations, I feel more empowered than I have in a while.

Because I want freedom from the surrounding monotony; to drift into wide open spaces, rove through forgotten places, and embrace the changing scenery—the glamor and tarnish: a space apart.

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The Husk

My sweaty footprints trailed along the laminate wood floor—a runway to the living room. With the narrow awning windows slightly ajar, the cool evening air filtered in, pricking the hairs on the back of my neck as my feet sunk into the slightly damp, freshly shampooed carpet. I stared out the floor-to-ceiling windows—past a handmade sign scrawled onto the back of an Under Construction placard leaning against the alley wall that read, “Please don’t shit here.”

Along the horizon, a brilliantly blue swath beneath a darkening cloud bank highlighted the city skyline, and as I pressed my face against the window glass, I could just make out the Space Needle. I imagined the view was comparable from the deck I’d constructed almost a year prior as I settled into Gay Gardens—my enthusiasm for what was to come in the little cottage fueling all sorts of home improvement projects, helping distract me from the reminders of how I’d ended up its lone steward.

I soaked in the view and demolished a walnut-Nutella roll and then a homemade fruit bar from the farmers market, the berries fresh and bursting with flavor. I dragged over the only chair in the apartment and unfurled into it, extending my legs out into the potted plant forest at my feet.

Dusting remnant crumbs off my jeans, I started unpacking the fourth carload of belongings I’d brought over, marveling at the bags’ random contents: a cheese grater, a music box,  an assortment of shower products. Slowly, methodically, I began piecing together where things would go—envisioning the space gradually filling with furniture and plants.

Aside from the apartment’s patent emptiness, a few other things to which I’d grown accustomed were noticeably absent:  the caustically frigid air, the musky smell of mold. Even without the heater on, the temperature hovered around 75 degrees—with the east-facing windows soaking in all the morning sun. My eyes weren’t agitated by allergies, and the semi-constant tinnitus from my cold-accosted Eustachian tubes was nearly gone; here, I wouldn’t have to wear ear muffs inside.

Sweat beaded on my forehead, and I stripped off my coat, tossing it into an empty corner. Light shifted behind me as clouds stampeded across the sky—my shadow dancing along the cream walls, a harbinger of this new chapter of movement and change. A storm began rolling in, its flurries fluttering down and melding with Seattle’s signature mist.

The thought of returning to Gay Gardens for another frigid, sleepless night made me shiver.

Moments later, slushy snow whipped tempest-like outside the immobile panes—the shrieking wind barely audible, the air inside heavy and warm, like a worn sweater.

I turned and faced my new nest.

This is where my life continues.

Gay Gardens was no longer my home; my time there was over.

***

With large expanses of its walls and floors liberated of art and rugs, Gay Gardens had become markedly colder than it’d been weeks before. Even the dankness that’d hit me like a ton of bricks when I’d initially toured the house had returned—like something in the fridge had just begun to rot.

From the last remaining area rug, JoJo eyed me suspiciously as she’d been doing all morning while I swooped in and out, ferrying off furniture and artwork. She splayed across the coarse, colorful fibers: laying claim to her protected island the way a child does with sofa cushions floating in a sea of imaginary lava.

Snow slowly clung to the budding trees out front as I muscled my entire memory foam top—complete with bedding—into my car like a bloated burrito, the sheet corners dragging along the dampened stairway. The sky began morphing into a dense, white mass. I raced back down, skittered into the bathroom, and began knocking everything out of the medicine cabinet and pulling baskets from under the sink. A few minutes later, nothing but the plunger remained.

I threw open the 70s-era fridge and loaded condensation-kissed dishes glutted with leftovers; foreseeing an exhausting final push for the evening, I’d have little effort to pull anything remotely nutritive together for dinner.

Before I knew it, the car was full again, and I was off. I had exactly an hour to unload everything before returning for my most precious cargo, and to convey two albatross-like pieces of furniture into their new owners’ waiting hands.

***

With 20 minutes to spare, I pulled back up to the house. Descending the stairs, I could feel exhaustion and fatigue slowly hugging my bones, cajoling me to stop.

Back inside, I listened to the heater rattle away as I flitted into the empty rooms, ensuring I’d snagged everything I needed for the next few days. The couple I’d be meeting to pick up the mid-century sofa and chair were running behind, which gave me a few moments to catch my breath.

I moved JoJo’s crate into the living room, tossing in a couple of her favorite toys. Knowing something was up, she scampered inside and disappeared beneath the layers of blankets.

I pulled the chair and sofa closer to the door, and wiped them down one last time. In moving the chair days before, I’d exposed a long-dead spider’s larder: drained gnat corpses littering the chipped, white-painted floor beneath; husks of their former selves, they’d provided nourishment and life to their now absent consumer.

Apart from the pair, nearly 30 beautiful furniture pieces, along with hundreds of pieces of Fiestaware and vintage tchotchkes, had waltzed out the door over the preceding month—their vacancies at first startling, then enlivening.

We really don’t need things to cultivate happiness.

Standing atop one of the only functional heating vents, I could feel the circulation in my feet picking up; after multiple trips of kicking my shoes on and off, my socks were hopelessly waterlogged. But there was something incredibly calming about standing there as the heat writhed around my toes, my back leaning into my leather love seat—knowing that in the span of an hour, JoJo and I would be somewhere else. Warm.

Minutes later, the couple arrived and carted away the furniture. And then I hurriedly gathered up JoJo, feeling as if we weren’t so much leaving as we were escaping—as if I were Sally Field, starring in Not Without My Doghter.

With JoJo crated and prepped, I did one last circuit through the house.

As I cut across the darkened living room, I left my hand outstretched, at the height where it’d have undulated along the sofa back—memories of its cold, stitched leather conjuring it back into being; my hand reaching for something that’d never return, like a ghost haunting a past life.

Wind howled outside, buffeting the clapboard. Warped by time and neglect, window sashes rocked in their tracks. In the tiny bathroom, I pressed my hand against the lone window’s painted sash—framing bubbled, frosted glass—remembering how relieved I was to apply the final coat of Pale Starlet. I could feel the air intruding through the splintered cracks, curling around it—reclaiming it. Willing me away.

I took a breath, stepped back, and let it go, watching the sash loll back and forth.

From the bathroom doorway, I could hear JoJo rustle impatiently. I floated back down the hallway, gathered her up, and turned back—the sashes’ thuds a slow, measured applause reverberating into the husk of Gay Gardens as I pulled the front door closed and whispered goodbye.

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Piece by Piece

Eloise was in the process of telling me how her husband, Bobby, hadn’t slept with her in several years when Bobby wandered through the living room into the kitchen. I heard the refrigerator open and close, and the gentle pssst of the beer can popping open. Eloise rolled her eyes.

I didn’t know Eloise, but I was sitting in her smoke-saturated recliner, my eyes watering and catching the penetrating gaze of their ancient, morbidly obese Dachshund, Floppy.

Eloise raised her Pinot Grigio-filled jelly glass in a “cheers” gesture toward the kitchen as Floppy descended a set of plush steps leading down from the overstuffed leather sofa to the floor and nuzzled my ankle.

She’d been a director for a pharmaceutical company, but had retired years ago – spending her time recovering from invasive surgeries, the pain from which she countered with “lovely things.”

Things that overflowed from every available surface.

When I arrived – arms brimming with plants, vases, and assorted blown glass – I asked where I should deposit everything. She motioned over to the cluttered kitchen table, and I nudged figurines and boxes out of the way just enough to accommodate everything. She shoved a wad of cash into my hand, and then asked that I sit.

“So, what about you? What’s your story?”

Later, as I waved goodbye, Eloise shuffled after me and told me to take some bubble wrap for the rest of my “pretty things, so they don’t get scuffed.” I followed her outstretched finger, my eyes dodging below multiple hanging pea coats adorned with brightly-colored, jewel-encrusted pins and brooches.

“Oh yeah. Those are something, aren’t they?”

Eye-level with an enormous Christmas tree pin, I stooped to pick up the two carefully tied bags of bubble wrap.

“They certainly are somethin’.”

After I closed the door, she and Bobby commenced sniping at one another – their slurred commentary chocked with “…more of this crap…” and “…oh don’t you start with me.”

I exhaled. Breathed in the chilly night air. And whispered back to the items I’d left behind.

I’m sorry.

I counted the bills, tucked them into my wallet, and turned the ignition.

Onward.

***

Nearly an hour later, after I pulled up to the house and deposited the bags of bubble wrap into the recycling, I noticed that a few steps in the rotting staircase leading down to the house had cleaved away from the banisters. Each hung lazily from rusted nails. But rather than stooping to investigate this new project, I braced myself against the handrails and launched myself over the gap.

Each day it seems some part of Gay Gardens falls apart. The sink with its leaks; lights buzzing and flickering from the moisture inside the walls; the clapboard popping away from rusted penny nails. And I listen to it all slowly coming undone, as creatures scurry through the walls. It’s as though Gay Gardens is a meteorite hurtling into a planet’s orbit – captured by gravity, plucked from time, slowly losing pieces of itself as it crashes to its entropic finale.

I’d forgotten to leave the porch light on, and listened as JoJo paced impatiently on the other side of the weathered door while I fumbled with my keys in the dark, the drips from the leaking porch roof slowly dotting my jacket sleeve.

Just a few more months.

With a concerted push, the swollen door flew open, knocking into the small Art Deco end table and jostling the tabletop lamp – sending it into a momentary, wobbly dance and spraying light across the living room.

Just inside the door, JoJo twirled in a circle – her typical greeting. During a time of transition, it’s always a comfort to focus on the minute details of normal life. I bend, murmur Oh my goodness! – her cue to roll over, exposing her hairless tummy and pawing at my hands.

I stood and scanned the room – visually hopscotching from the small mound of books at the fireplace threshold to the pieces of furniture jammed together, the paintings resting against the wall.

This has been a good home.

In the rapidly emptying space, there’re the slightest hints of echoes: jarring, enlivening – replete with potential.

***

In the weeks leading up to my visit with Eloise, I’d been spending every waking moment outside of work hustling furniture and planters and plants and every conceivable item into new hands.

Van Briggle pottery to a traveling nurse who carefully removed the small, matte-finished turquoise pieces from the butcher paper wrapping, her bandaged hands slowly tracing the delicate forms as she grinned. A Depression-era dresser to a petite grandmother who, from the far depths of her flea market booth, admired the piece in the dull lamplight and mused about how much her granddaughter would love it. A small 70s table to a young woman whose eyes sparkled as she looked it over in the oil-stained parking lot where we met, the rain drizzling down as she beamed, “It’s exactly what I wanted.” A tripodal, midcentury-style contemporary planter to a towering, quiet man whose deep laugh echoed in my mind as we said goodbye.

We are not so alone in this world.

***

After a few rounds of tossing battered toys, JoJo and I ventured out into the rapidly chilling, darkening evening.

A full moon cast a dull glow across the yard – now cleared of gnomes and planters, pocked with the occasional filled hole where I removed and re-homed a planting. Awkward shadows danced across the warped clapboard as I nudged a leaning downspout back into place.

Upslope, leaves sparkled from neighbors’ holiday lights; wind rustled through the trees, expelling saturated, rotted wisteria vines. The lights’ twinkling glow filtered across the yard, falling over the scuffed, upturned earth where the garden used to be.

Moss clung to the edges of the paint-chipped concrete birdbath, rainwater from the afternoon’s showers glutting its shallow bowl – refreshing it, finding the worn grooves.

Overflowing, dancing down to the ground.

Alive in the moonlight.

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Coloring Outside the Lines

The house is dark, save a few slants of remaining moonlight abdicating to the slowly rising sun. Pothos and philodendron leaves cascade down weathered furniture fronts, and rustle from the breeze creeping through the open doors and windows.

Rhythmic dripping from a leaky outside spigot acts as an early morning metronome while I fill the water kettle and push the windows open as far as they can extend. I feed JoJo, and slip on my battered shoes to empty the brimming, spigot-filled bucket around the bases of my tomato and pepper plants.

I pluck the yellowing leaves from my bush beans and reposition the baby eggplants so that they grow in the opposite direction of neighboring plants’ rogue, unfurling tendrils. Tomatoes are reddening and strawberries are beginning to drip down from their leafy flowers.

The garden is tiny, and was thrown together in desperation, with seeds and starts sown by a beginner.

***

My efforts to reclaim this oddly-shaped spit of land from the suffocating canopy and invasive ground cover began in the yard’s lone, rotting raised bed.

[Image description: an overgrown raised bed with trash and weeds.]
[Image description: an overgrown raised bed with trash and weeds.]
The house was hot, and we’d just decided to divorce; piles of boxes, furniture, and paint cans accreted in every corner. Nothing was finished. Everything was undone—in a state of flux. We’d been coloring within the lines for four years; and then we both strayed outside, scribbling in different directions.

But then and there, as the heat nipped the back of my neck, I annexed the raised bed—ripped out all of the weeds and bagged up the dirt-caked garbage. An hour later, it was trimmed and cleaned—the soil upturned, ready to welcome new crops.

IMG_8456 (1)
[Image description: same raised bed, completely cleared.]
Weeks later, I’d raised my hodgepodge garden enclosure around it—with novel expectations that it’d soon overflow with a rich vegetative bounty. But then a tremendous deep chill moved in—settling over Seattle, making it one of the coldest and wettest winters on record. Tarps and pins held the garden in place, secured my culinary cache. I naively believed I’d be rewarded for all the hours-long tending—the snow-shoveling, the pest removal.

But when the sun regained its footing and danced across my freshly exposed starts, they all bolted, leaving me to scrape off immature leaves and tiny vegetables, and YouTube multiple videos answering questions about the potential adverse health consequences of eating broccoli flowers.

All that was left to do was rip out everything I’d spent months fretting over. And start again. In gardening, there’s little room for sentimentality.

Nearly a year later, the fourth iteration of the garden has been the most successful yet.

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[Image description: garden enclosure with door open, along the back side of the house.]
IMG_3198
[Image description: inside of garden enclosure. Multiple plants in containers, with some tomatoes visible.]
By now I know not to expect every plant to fruit out at the same time; there will rarely be an instance in which I’m overwhelmed with immense yields.

But each evening my little garden provides: a few beans here, two tomatoes there, and a handful of mixed greens.

IMG_3232

And that’s all I need.

***

Just beyond the garden fence, the weathered bird bath stands crookedly, the tiny, placid puddle contained within it interrupted intermittently by flocks of finches. Beyond it, in the tree branches once choked by ivy, Northern Harriers sit and eye the open yard. Engorged spiders trundle down delicate silken threads anchored to newly erupted leaves.

Sun beams down and warms my dirt-covered hands, and I smile up into the welcoming warmth.

I stoop into the scraggily garden—and listen to the frenetic chirps, feel the watchful hawks’ gazes, and remind myself that I’m just another piece in this landscape.

I tend the soil, pull out browning stalks, and run my fingertips over budding fruit—their pale green, stubbly faces soaking in the light.

Preparing to fill with color.

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In Bloom

From the living room I watched as the breeze ripped through the densely vegetated slopes, rattling the tree branches and tousling their fragile new leaves.

In the distance, the Space Needle glowed torch-like and I stared on until the gusts died down and the wind-bent trees rebounded into place, cluttering the view ever so slightly. Built in the early 40s, Gay Gardens had had quite a view of the growing Seattle skyline, even before the 1962 World’s Fair raised the city’s most iconic building. And gradually, the view narrowed with the enveloping canopy, and the little rotting cottage became isolated behind a nearly impenetrable green wall of blackberry bushes and aged rhododendrons.

JoJo dozed in my lap, and I focused on the mediocre movie I’d snagged from the Renton Goodwill a few weeks prior. The wind howled again, and a thud echoed across the roof, rousing JoJo who woofed and scampered around searching for the offending noisemaker.

The next morning, as I made my rounds ripping up weeds, I noticed one of the chimney caps had gotten dislodged from the windstorm. A few weeks prior, the same thing had happened, and some wee beast had made its way into the attic, startling me and JoJo awake with what could only be described as zombie-inspired guttural cleansing. So as I clawed my way up onto the roof, I worked quickly to carefully re-center the cap, ensuring there was no available point of entry. In the process, I eyed a rogue brick that’d dislodged from the chimney stack—clearly the thud-inducing culprit from the previous night. I shoved it back into place, completing the puzzle.

With the spotty clouds opening up between intermittent rain showers, I had an unobstructed view of Elliott Bay and a faint rainbow. Just below me, pale pink buds studded the branches of a gnarled tree clinging precariously to the back slope. Glutted with promising effulgence, each one dripped and glistened in the rapidly clearing grayish mist.

I took a deep breath and slowly took stock of my little home, feeling an overwhelming sense of gratitude for having the opportunity to play a role in reviving this oasis.

A little slice of paradise.

And in my bones I felt something familiar—the sense that Gay Gardens will be where I celebrate many life-changing moments, each of which will become a part of this Eden, adding to the narrative of this secret long-held by time.

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Coming Attractions

As the seemingly ceaseless rain halts and the clouds part just enough to reveal the thinnest rays of sunlight, I scurry outside and collect water-smoothed glass and metal bits that’ve eroded from the back terrace—the perennial midden of memories slowly being covered by a blanket of germinating grass and tiny white flowers.

With the heavy lifting of landscape remodeling complete, I’ve started to enjoy the simple task of tending the green spaces I’ve reclaimed from the bramble by slowly purifying the trash-glutted soil around Gay Gardens. Anything I find that’s in decent enough shape is recycled back into the landscape’s architecture or as part of my tiny vegetable garden.

I cobbled together the wee veggie garden enclosure out of cast-off building materials, and other bits I uncovered around the yard.
I cobbled together the wee veggie garden enclosure out of cast-off building materials, and other bits I uncovered around the yard.

During my latest pass over the grounds, I notice pavers protruding from the terrace bank. After a little dusting off, I track their path into the dense foliage below the house, and wonder where the path once led, and who strode down it.

Above me, a moss-covered tree that’d been completely obscured by English ivy has buds peppered along its branches—all on the cusp of blooming. Insects buzz impatiently around the unopened flowers, nudging them with their thrumming bodies before abandoning their attempts and retreating into the woods.

No longer covered with vines, the tree is blooming again. And grass is slowly springing to life where thick, sprawling blackberry bushes had rooted. I think the $10 vintage bird bath from an estate sale fits perfectly.
No longer covered with ivy, the tree is blooming again. Along the hill, grass and flowers are slowly springing to life where thick, sprawling blackberry bushes and invasive Japanese knotweed had rooted. I think the $10 vintage bird bath from an estate sale fits in perfectly.

Once I deposit handfuls of shredded plastic, shattered bottles, and unidentifiable, rotted building materials into my garbage can, I make a quick detour through the garden and pluck slugs off of my juvenile broccoli florets and toss them downhill.

As I tiptoe along the stepping stones leading around the house, water gurgles up from the over-saturated ground beneath them, spraying mini geysers onto the muddy, soaked grass. My circuit ends at the front door just as clouds clutter the sky and rain begins pouring down. From beneath my front overhang, I watch rivulets cascade down the warped clapboard, silently pooling and bubbling out from beneath the paint like lanced cysts.

I survey the yard and cleared beds and smile, thinking back to the tangled jungle it was before.

A view to the front terraces--all of which are now free of choking ivy, and sun can actually get through.
A view to the front terraces. Now freed from a canopy of ivy and vines, the plants can actually get sunlight.

As if to remind me of my body’s inability to deal with the onslaught of wind, rain, and perpetual dampness, my temples begin throbbing and my ears start ringing. Lately, I’ve come to realize that my body isn’t the one I once knew: I’ve started flirting with chronic pain, and it seems with every year, my joints and muscles conspire to contort my body into the frail figure I’ve always worried was in my future.

I straighten my back and wander back inside to deduct the latest grocery bill, and watch the balance dip into the double digits. I staple a wad of papers from my mechanic—an unexpectedly immense bill from my car’s broken axle—and tuck it into my accordion file folder. The past year has been pretty lean by necessity, and with the cost of living in Seattle creeping higher every year, I worry about how long I’ll be able to hold onto Gay Gardens. Until I’m pushed out, I’ll continue to make ends meet to keep this place all my own.

In the meantime, to entertain myself with cheap thrills, I’ve been ghosting through estate sales during their final hours to cherry-pick chipped pots, neglected lawn equipment, or unwanted garden gnomes. There’s a certain satisfaction with finding some long-forgotten piece of someone’s personal history—perhaps a gag gift, or a beloved treasure—and re-homing it to my little rotting oasis.

Mr. Pipps, the wee gnome, and the concrete planter were both partially buried in an overgrown garden (at an estate sale). When I expressed an interest, they just told me to dig it out and take it. So I did, flowers and all.
At an estate sale, I found Mr. Pipps, the wee gnome, and the concrete planter both partially buried in an overgrown garden. When I expressed an interest in them, the organizers just told me to dig it all out and take it. So I did, flowers and all.

Following a recent estate sale haul totaling $11, I settle in with JoJo for the evening, and treat myself to Arrival.

As a kid, I never favored sitting through the seemingly endless sequence of previews leading up to the featured presentation; I resented their temporary blockade of cinematic pleasure. But now, the previews are one of my favorite parts of movie-watching.

While JoJo dozes on my lap and I crack open a chocolate bar, I let myself melt into the film—let it reach inside me, and revel in how it resuscitates my heart and mind, and reminds me of the strength and courage it takes to brave each new day with hope, sincerity, and unabashed awe.

Lately, the sheer exhaustion of existing—of listening to the grinding and groaning of my car, pushing through the rigors of work, resisting and marching and railing against authoritarianism, and deducting the constant bills—has felt especially debilitating. But I know the only way to get through is to push onward—through the rust and jams and daily machinations.

And in the meantime, I’ll continue to surrender my mind to immersive daydreams—my own collection of coming attractions—that help fuel my creativity, and propel me toward my goals. But amid those fantastic mental wanderings, I’ve often been reminded that this—the fringe, the in-between of barely making ends meet, the rusty gears, and worn parts—is a wondrous privilege: a most luxurious life, a featured presentation all its own.

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Bordering on Normal

Closing the front door behind me, I readjusted my crocheted shawl, and stowed the dog-walking bag. Joanna pricked up her ears, and fixated her marble-like eyes on the darkened sunporch.

Usually, that type of thing wouldn’t bother me. But whether it was the crushing weight of the holidays, the fact that George Michael had just died, or my sister reminding me hours earlier that Seattle was the serial killer capital of the country, I took more notice.

I took a step forward, and a man began speaking in an even-keeled, matter-of-fact way – exactly how I’d imagined my murderer to sound.

“It’s…”

…TIME TO DIE?

…YOUR LAST MOMENT?

…COLD IN HERE?

In one-and-a-half seconds of contemplating what he was saying, I realized two things: the sickly jade plant I grabbed was a lousy excuse for a weapon; and two, I was going to die in stained sweat pants and a moth-eaten shawl.

“…seven o’ clock.”

For a moment, I just stood still. Like the stupid friend in every horror movie, Joanna ran determinedly toward the darkened room to investigate the voice. A second later, she skittered back, sat on the rug, and stared up at me – which was when the weight of the potted plant started to register. I lowered it back onto its pedestal, and a bloated leaf broke off and fell to the floor.

Apparently, it was seven o’ clock, and the computer repair technician – in addition to downloading a Dance Dance Revolution anime video onto my desktop – configured my newly rebuilt laptop to recite the time every hour.

As my heart rate reassumed a normal rhythm, and I talked myself out of posting “YOU SHOULD WARN SINGLE PEOPLE WHO LIVE IN THE WOODS THAT THEIR REBUILT COMPUTER MIGHT TALK TO THEM” on Yelp, I pulled the shawl tighter, lit my lavender diffuser, and settled into the sofa with a mug of hot cocoa. This was it: my first Christmas as a divorcee.

The weight of it was unexpectedly heavy.

***

The day before, I’d been sitting at the Canadian border considering witty replies to the standard question: “What was your business in Canada?”

“Those dildos weren’t exactly going to deliver themselves, am I right?”

“I heard the bacon was great.”

“I was in search of some mounties.”

“Did you not see the outcome of the US election?”

After answering truthfully, however, I realized I should’ve gone with one of my alternatives. The border patrol officer’s face drew back in on itself, adding two additional chins to his third.

“Wait, so you’re telling me you came across this morning, and just went for a walk in the park, and are going back?”

I nodded.

“That’s just not normal.”

Partly stunned, I chuckled.

He screwed up his face even more, and straightened his back.

“Pop the trunk.”

“You’ll have to buy me dinner first.”

“What?”

“Certainly!”

I could tell he was eager to file away some story he could use over Christmas dinner to impress his in-laws – regale them with how he’d stopped the largest shipment of cocaine in US history.

Judging by how forcefully he slammed the trunk, my stained reusable grocery bags must’ve been a severe letdown. Without so much as a grunt, he handed back my passport and license, and dismissed me with a wave.

That evening, while eating Trader Joe’s tortellini and reading OverheardLA’s Instagram, I assured JoJo that her breath bordered on a public health hazard. She responded by timing the movements of my lips just enough to lick the roof of my mouth.

Gargling at the kitchen sink, I noticed one of my planters had blown off the back steps. I slipped on my battered Toms and stepped out into the rapidly chilling air, righting the planter and taking a walk around the house.

Remnant raindrops dripped off of my makeshift garden fence, and thrushes crashed around in the shattered Japanese knotweed rotting at the base of the terrace. Biting wind blew through a tree I’d freed from thick, choking ivy – rattling its aged, mossy branches against one another. Around the corner of the house, my rusted glider set caught the breeze and creaked awake. Beyond it, up the hill, a large holly bush’s bright red berries glistened with moisture, and a pair of robins battled over the highly sought after territory, catapulting twigs in all directions.

With my circuit nearly complete, I stopped at a tall foxglove I’d carefully extracted from a precarious niche along a neighbor’s drainage ditch. Its developed roots had cascaded down in a wispy, matted mess, and I’d worked quickly to dig a deep enough hole, and arrange it so that it was braced on two sides from the wind. Fully transplanted, it’d listed to one side, propping itself on a dying heliotrope. I’d repacked the soil around its base, and had broken off sickly, limply-hanging yellowed leaves to rebalance it – and to give the new growth beneath them room to breathe. I ran my hand along the righted, towering stalk as I turned the corner to ascend the porch stairs, and nudged one of its last pale, pink blooms.

Inside, JoJo twirled on the kitchen’s scatter rug and expected a treat for supervising my round-the-house orbit from her various window perches. I put my hands on my hips and demanded to know what should be done. She twirled again, play-growled, and ran out of the room. I kicked off my muck-caked shoes, and slipped on my flannel-patterned house slippers – necessities in the drafty, poorly-heated cottage.

For a moment, I let my eyes dart from newly-painted door frames to found objects, from brightly-colored Fiesta and stripped hardware on the built-ins to patched holes and reglazed window panes. Albeit an ice box, the cottage seemed more alive than ever.

I gave a deep, cleansing sigh – and ran toward the squeaking dog toy, into the heart of our home.

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Getting Bent

Halfway into the crawl space, my flashlight flickered horror movie style, the telltale sign of imminent, consuming darkness. I’d be alone, beneath Gay Gardens, surrounded by cast-off insulation tubes filled with mummified rat remains – their long, serpentine tails hardened, their taut, paper-thin skin stretched over hollow shells.

Above me, through the floorboards, Joanna pitter-pattered anxiously; Lassie’s antithesis, she’d likely curl into a ball and lick herself had I called out for rescue. It was just me and the corpses and the fading light.

My glasses fogged from my labored breathing, and I could feel blood dribbling across my mouth. Ever the wet blanket, my immune system was having none of this. If I wasn’t opting to turn around and crawl out willingly, my body would force me to – a nosebleed would tip the scales.

Tumbling out of the unhinged, rotted access door, I unfastened my jacket hood, tossed my dirt-caked gloves to the frost-covered ground, and pulled off my bloody face mask. I gulped down the cool air, and held my glasses away from me, watching their lenses slowly clear. Around me, piles of old wood, moldy cardboard, and rusted pipe fragments lay in piles.

A replacement mask and a new flashlight battery later, I hauled out more piles of junk, along with the insulation tubes and their desiccated passengers. The most random task on my weekend to-do list was done, and I even walked away with a few unexpected prizes: a hand-painted flower pot and a 1950s milk glass mixing bowl.

As I folded the tubing into my tiny garbage can and topped it with the bag of dead rats, I could almost feel the house breathe a sigh of relief; or, maybe that was me.

***

Cleaning has always been a way for me to center – to unplug and dust away mental cobwebs – and Gay Gardens has certainly afforded plenty of opportunities to do just that. It’s been a labor of love, and an anchor as life continues to change and unfold.

And while I don’t know what the future holds for me or this little cottage, I’m thankful every morning that, for now, I’m its caretaker. Plenty of people have asked why I’m putting so much effort into a place that’s not even mine, and that’ll most likely be bulldozed at some point down the line. My response is simple: “Why not?” I, too, sometimes question the amount of blood, sweat, and tears I keep putting into this place, but then I acknowledge the importance I’ve always put on creating a home wherever I land. The process has always been a source of strength, and right now I need this place as much as it needs me.

I often need the quiet and the calm to melt into myself, to plan out my next steps. Lately, I’ve needed more time away from the hubbub, and the growing national horror. I’ve cycled the energies I’d usually expend scrolling through Facebook feeds to other hobbies that interest me more – things that actually elicit in me a drive to start that next new chapter.

While I still have a long ways to go, I’ll enjoy each moment along the way to my next great endeavor – whether I’m scaling a mountain, crossing a border, or bending into a crawl space.

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Growing Season

Her bouncy hair bobs up and down as she bulldozes over to the cash register.

“CHARLENE,” she booms to her counterpart three feet away, “I’M GOIN’ ON BREAK AFTER I RING THIS GENTLEMAN UP.”

Without looking up, Charlene nods – an apparent pavlovian response to her colleague’s generously full voice.

Ears ringing, I turn back to my cardboard tray sitting atop the counter as the nursery cashier rounds the high wood island and takes her position behind the cash register. She clears her throat, as if preparing to conduct an orchestral suite. Instead, she curls her arm around the entire tray and begins scanning my veggie starts, interjecting commentary regarding the growth rates of each teeny sprout. Shoving the bulk of the starts aside, she eyes two wispy asparagus plants closely – even suspiciously.

“Well, you do know that these won’t be ready for years, right?”

Fuccccck. My face flushes.

“Oh, OF COURSE. Just figured I’d get them in the ground now!”

A card swipe later, I fasten everything into the back of the car while casting intense shade at my two albatrosses and muttering, “I may just eat you out of spite.”

***

Back home, I set my full trays down inside the piecemeal garden enclosure I spent the previous afternoon methodically crafting together – using chunks of concrete as ad hoc sledgehammers, driving corroded metal stakes and rebar into the ground for structural support; wood pallets from my neighbors’ garbage for windscreens and walls; scrap fencing and old, severed wire strands for holding things together; wood paneling from a deconstructed closet for a makeshift door; and cast-off, roadside planters for additional storage.

Adding the clearance veggie starts to the mix, I halfheartedly chuckle and call up to Joanna peering out the window.

“Well, our scavenged garden isn’t going to win any beauty pageants, is it?”

JoJo sniffs the air, then disappears inside as I begin to gut bags of soil, emptying their contents into the raised bed.

Hours later, and ankle-deep in dark, rich soil, I step back and admire the hodgepodge before me: planters overflowing with half-wilted mint, parsley, basil, green onions, and shiso, and the rotting raised bed filled with rainbow chard, beets, broccoli, purple cauliflower, and kale. Mopping my brow and taking in the scene, I realize I haven’t tended a garden since I was 8 years old.

The garden

I have no clue what I’m doing. The only thing I do know is that this is more of a necessity than a hobby. I really need this to succeed.  

***

A few hours later, as the sun begins setting, I’m toting my last full watering can to my parched starts when my super hot neighbor waves from his side yard, and ventures over. Like a deer in the headlights, I stare entranced, my vocabulary quickly descending into unintelligible gibberish.

He starts chatting about the garden, and I try to play it cool, but then I notice his fly is wide open.

There is a god! 

Quickly noticing his wardrobe malfunction, he adjusts himself and zips up without the slightest bit of embarrassment. Without thinking, I sigh loudly, dejectedly – catapulting our awkwardly stilted conversation into mortifyingly tragic territory.

But as he turns to go, he calls back.

“You know, this place looks really good. You should be proud.”

My response can only be described as 40% dolphin squeak, 60% hyena shriek. I watch him walk back to his place, and then swivel around to my ramshackle garden – and then at my little rotting house.

It is something, isn’t it?

I pull open the newly secured garden door, and wander inside my little corral, nudging planters here and there, and dousing everything with water.

Tiny beads dangle at the ends of the fragile shoots, the wilted leaves. I take a deep breath, smile at this haphazard life, and whisper to myself.

Confidence. Patience. Courage.

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Gay Gardens

Sweat beads on my brow, and Jimmy Eat World’s “Middle” blasts through my ear buds. Brier-pricked and cut, my gloved hands receive little in the way of protection from nature’s most annoying floral bastards. My paint-spattered, dirt-coated glasses slip and fall into the growing pile of freshly weeded detritus amassing at my feet as I bend to unhook a gargantuan, spiked vine from my pilled It Gets Better tee.

Now free of unwanted hangers-on, I step back and survey the cleared areas of the sprawling stone-laid terraces. Insects dart over the freshly uprooted soil, congregating around fractured, dewy stalks and root balls. I pause my music and sink into the morning’s natural calm. Hollow, browned stalks of Japanese knotweed clang together in the wind like bamboo chimes, and dead leaves filter down through new gaps in the overgrown canopy and settle in sun-dappled piles.

Gay Gardens, the early months

It’s an uncharacteristically hot Seattle day, and the formerly shaded earth quickly dries while I sit for a much-needed respite, feeling the worn stones warming the insides of my calves. Like Kate Winslet in A Little Chaos, I’ve been methodically unmasking mature ferns, shrubs, and trees from their brambly oppressors and mapping a new, slightly haphazard order onto the leftovers.

Metaphors for every sort of life experience drift in and out of my mind as I till the soil and pull at stubborn roots. I give each thought a little slant of limelight before letting them dissipate into mental white noise.

***

Sided with weathered, warped yellow clapboard and sloppily trimmed in faded red, the cottage sits on a shoddily cleared terrace, accessible only by a rickety wooden staircase built into a steep hill just off an arterial, hilly road in West Seattle. Its seclusion is just what we wanted – the antithesis of our small Capitol Hill apartment in the center of a growing party district of young twenty-something college students.

And while the subsequent tours with the uninformed property management company’s agents brought us vis-à-vis with the cottage’s less than stellar drawbacks, we went for it – mostly because its location, privacy, and space aligned with the most desired bullet points on our wish list.

Of course, being a post-war cottage that’d been overgrown for a few years, it needed a lot of help, which hadn’t exactly been a priority of the decade-long tenant before us, or the property management company: turd-colored, faded interior paint; an illegally enclosed back deck; a disgusting bathroom; dirty, ivy-covered windows; hole-pocked walls; and more than a fair share of creepy-crawly roommates.

But even before we fully moved in, we decided to separate. Sharing a home that feels more like a staging area isn’t easy for anyone, which is why the forgotten gardens started to play such a therapeutic role for me.

Now that we’re both in our respective nests, it’s time to move forward – to take time to celebrate the good times, focus on the future. And, for me, perform plenty of internal weeding.

***

The whir of far off traffic on the bridge melds together in a wave-like, rhythmic tide, lulling my eyelids closed. Seclusion like this is beyond rare, especially as Seattle continues to boom and rental prices soar. I’m sure at some point I’ll get priced out, the cottage will be torn down by a developer, and the carefully curated landscape will be razed asunder a bulldozer.

Until then, I’ll be channeling Kate and using the landscape both as an emotional crutch and an aesthetic treasure. And will keep slathering as much lipstick – and paint – on this cute pig as possible.

Because I’d like to keep Gay Gardens full of character and far away from descending into a moldy, waterlogged lair wherein I routinely swaddle my fro in a cashmere headdress and soft-shoe down the hallway to the applause of a ragtag crew of feisty raccoons.

As my cackling drifts up through the attic, between cracked seams, and melts into the night.