moving – Yellow Brick Missives

September 3, 2018September 4, 2018

The Weight of Things

Leaning against the front door and eyeing the cabinet’s dusty outline on the chipped, white-painted floor, I felt an unexpected weight lift; my mind was slightly clearer. Outside, rain drizzled down, and I hoped the man had made it down the hillside and back to the bridge without too much trouble.

I thought about the glass-fronted Art Deco cabinet in the back of his homemade hauling trailer—draped in a burlap shroud, like the recently deceased in a western: being slowly removed from home, taken far, far away. I recalled staring at myself in the glass door’s reflection the night I’d planned to kill myself a decade earlier.

We map so much emotional weight onto things.

I reached inside my jacket pocket and removed the crumpled bills, counting them out before folding them into the growing roll hidden inside a tin in my bedroom. Little by little, as pieces I’d cherished for well over a decade left me, I quieted my exhausted, fretting mind by reminding myself that I was doing this for all the right reasons: to work towards financial solvency, and improved health. And to experience a long-overdue catharsis.

The next day, I watched the sun slowly rise, bleeding through the opaque glass sliding doors separating the bedroom from the rest of my new apartment. The light warming my arms, the rumpled sheets washing wave-like over me.

I slipped into a favorite pair of worn jeans, threw on a holy tee shirt, and took JoJo out to welcome a new morning: the first day of a new beginning.

***

Before I reached the summit, I paused and looked out over the mossy canopy—a primeval, forested canvas. Rain dripped down from the tightly knitted fronds and branches, dappling my camera and sleeves with refreshing moisture. As I shifted my backpack and headed uphill, my bear bell clanged lowly—a metronomic reminder of my vulnerable place in the natural order.

A few feet later, I peered over the falls, absorbed the soothing sounds of fresh water flowing over weathered rocks—churning pools disappearing underground and re-surging downslope. I took a few deep breaths, exhaled, and soaked in the view, expecting to feel a crushing weight lifted off my shoulders.

But I felt nothing, except a needling question creeping into the back of my mind.

What in the fuck am I doing here?

Somewhere along the line, I’d convinced myself that I had to travel far stretches, overcome amazing feats, cross the country or the world to be rewarded with life-changing clarity. But my short foray into the Olympic Peninsula’s woods only reaffirmed what I already knew—what I recognized each evening as I slowly drifted off into a fitful night’s sleep in my tent with a writing pad, bear bell, knife, and canteen within arm’s reach, the solar-powered lantern hanging overhead: we need so very little to thrive.

We surround ourselves with so much superfluous stuff to blunt the simple reality that the more we have, the less we actually live.

***

The apartment was blissfully still—overburdened fans and the sound machine retired for a brief reprieve. Sunlight warmed the worn leather on the love seat, and dripped over the heat-racked, withering tendrils listing out of chipped terra cotta pots. Seattle was experiencing a protracted, more intense summer than usual—and prized plants that weathered Gay Gardens’ drafty chill had succumbed to the inescapable, stagnate heat.

JoJo braced herself against the gracile legs of the Art Deco buffet turned TV stand, and leered into the beating sun—her tongue gradually inching out as she lapsed into deeper sleep. I, too, felt the heat climbing—sweat beading across my brow, dripping down my nose.

I’d just hit the six month mark on my apartment lease, and it felt as though I’d been living here for ages. Albeit a glorified studio with few furnishings, there were chairs I never sat in, things I didn’t use—so much space allocated to stylized tableaus that were wholly unnecessary. Everywhere I looked, charmless sterility stared back—no uneven angles, no roughened edges, just cool, muted cream walls and dark grey carpeting, particle board cabinets, and an overly massive bathroom. I began to regard it as a charmless easy bake oven in which I felt suffocatingly uninspired.

Weeks later, just before midnight, I scanned the room—soft light from the only remaining lamp illuminating a smattering of plants, cascading over a haphazard assortment of empty pots and stickered surfaces. I hugged the brownie-packed Cathrineholm casserole to my chest with one hand, and used the other to wield my fork—shoving it into the cakey middle and boring out a hole. As Ghost’s end credits rolled, “Unchained Melody” reverberated throughout the apartment. I felt like crying out of sheer exhaustion, but I didn’t want to saturate my brownies. JoJo rustled in her crate and let out an exasperated sigh; I was up far too late and making a ruckus. I tucked the DVD back into its case and slid it into the “Keep” pile.

Hours before, from the overstocked Fiction section, I watched the bookshop’s buyer assess my bags of DVDs and books. As he thumbed through the thick, leather-bound art book I’d toted around for years—but rarely opened—he called back to his partner, “Yeah, we’ll make an offer on this lot.”

I circled back through the shop to give them time, and sidestepped into the Social Sciences section for amusement. A few of my previously sold books—including one of the referential cruxes of my anthropology Master’s thesis—sat on the shelf gathering dust. I flipped through it, chuckled at my margin notes and dogears, and slid it back into the uneven line of bindings; the symbolism was laughable. Shortly thereafter, I found myself back at the counter.

All told, my haul garnered $16.25.

I sighed dejectedly. “Sold.”

The clerk who’d reviewed my pile sidled up to me.

“Hey, you know, it’s a bummer. But take a look at that back wall.”

He pointed behind the counter to a far wall partly obscured by mounded boxes of DVDs.

“I think I’m going to have to start pricing their resale at five cents apiece. But hey, this book, it’s so weird.”

He touched the large volume with unexpected gentleness. “I have no idea what it is, but it’s going to look great on someone’s bookshelf.”

I laughed.

“But at least it’ll stay in circulation. We’ll keep its story going.”

I smiled, patted the pile, collected my receipt, and walked away.

***

Days later, JoJo struggled against my snug hold. She was more interested in our coiffed visitor than being sandwiched against my sweat-saturated shirt. I couldn’t blame her.

The woman rapped her bejeweled press-on nails across the weathered dining table as she surveyed a pile of studio art pottery, and lifted up small mid century cache pots pocked with struggling succulents. She extended her index finger, the polished nail tip squaring dead-center on the glazed pot behind me—one that friends from North Carolina had gifted me right before I moved to Raleigh. Out from it grew a large Pilea peperomioides—what I’d come to dub as one of many “hipster plant necessities.”

“How much?”

I’d already told her that I hadn’t yet priced many items in the apartment, that I hadn’t anticipated having any buyers over. Still, I tried to reframe the whole situation as an opportunity.

I quoted a price, and then she motioned toward a small cluster of pots lining a corner table.

“And those four?”

As if sensing my growing irritation, JoJo sighed in my arms and descended into full-on fainting goat, her tiny form sagging as she exercised her greatest anti-holding technique: dead weight.

“All together, forty-five,” I blurted, setting JoJo down.

The minute the “five” rolled off my tongue, I cringed. Albeit a painfully low price, the plants needed to go.

Exceedingly pleased, the woman began doling her cash onto the table. Seconds later, she upended her purse entirely, counting quarters into one-dollar piles as her bangled bracelets clattered together in metallic applause.

JoJo sniffed around the woman’s pristine suit pant cuffs, and I snapped at her to back off. She glared back, wandered over to the spot vacated by the large planter I’d dragged over to the woman’s pile, and proceeded to roll around in the sun.

Touche.

“I have thirty-one dollars,” the woman said confidently, adding, “This is my laundry money.” As if that somehow justified the low-ball counteroffer.

I sighed.

“Fine.”

“So, you do this for a living?” she asked, apparently forgetting she’d already posed the same question thirty minutes prior, as I helped her load six large plants into her oversized, battered Ford pickup.

“Nope. But I’ve thought about it.”

“You really should. You have a lot of nice things.”

That line gets me every single time. It’s a kind sentiment to express, and it’s certainly a prospect I’ve explored. But I remind myself about how stressed I get when I’m surrounded by those same “nice things”—and the associated, incessant drive to collect more and then immediately shed the bulk. It’s bulimic materialism, one of the waste behaviors we’re taught is normal. Because, from an early age, people in America are conditioned to believe that the Norman Rockwell-esque “American Dream” is the pinnacle of success: two kids, a spouse, a generously-sized house with a new car parked in the driveway, and Scraps the dog running through a perfectly manicured green lawn out front. But that same dream has always been rooted in white supremacy and white privilege, racist policies, and a tarted up version of Manifest Destiny—move to the West and take what is rightfully yours; a hallmark of this country’s deep-seated taproot springing from genocide and slavery. This problematic mirage is perpetuated through hyperconsumerism, capitalism’s key driver: the notion that, with “hard won success” and a “can-do attitude,” comes the ability—nay, necessity—to conspicuously consume the right house, car, wardrobe, and on-trend decor. And we all fall for it; I certainly did.

Only after I finally got out of debt, and through ample self-reflection, was I able to acknowledge that I don’t want or need most of the elements of that force-fed image of success. More than ever, I now crave physical and mental space to breathe—to be free of things. I intend to wholeheartedly embrace this mentality while I’m young, rather than burying myself in baubles or committing myself to an unhealthy, toxic relationship in the short term, and then spending my precious golden years fretting about how to escape. So much of this next chapter is unwritten. But those parts I’m beginning to author are all about self care, and putting boundaries in place. Of cherishing what little I need, and letting the rest go—keeping only that which helps catapult me into my next phase. No matter where I end up, I’ll continue to map on my sense of personal beauty through the experiences and company I keep.

I slammed the truck’s heavy tailgate, and nodded to the woman. After I crossed the road back to my complex, she drove by slowly and rolled down her window.

“And let me know when you, uh, leave for good. What you want to do with the rest of your items. I have sort of a buying problem. HAHA!”

I waved her on, and assured her that I would. But I knew I’d never see her again.

***

As a high school senior, I was assigned a 10-page paper—a dreaded semester-long project, the tales of which resonated through my predecessors’ ranks. It’d be a literary rite of passage, a hurdle to clear. Each student chose a word, and that was the singular focus of their paper—its etymology, symbolism, and its evolving usages throughout history and through the works we’d read. It required calculated introspection.

I chose “growth.”

Decades later, I find myself in a far-flung corner of the country, away from everything and everyone I know. Moving here was a decision made as part of a joint life being cultivated; two years ago, it became a solo journey. I stayed and forced myself to root, to grow into my surroundings. I rehabbed Gay Gardens; I lost myself there. It became my Eden, from which I begrudgingly acknowledged I needed to fall. And I did.

I evolved, adapted.

Whenever I think of growth—as I did all of those years ago—the most common reflection is something new, generative: intimating some greater experience—a building of momentum, toward a logical conclusion or form. But the personal growth I’ve experienced here has been antithetical to how I assumed my life would develop: that it’d grow in a defined, understood direction. That’s not the case.

My anticipated “beginning” in Seattle is no longer dependent on when I find someone, or the “right” job, or encounter some fortuitous windfall, or even accomplish long-held dreams. It’s suddenly so painfully obvious, and within my ability to kick-start. I just have to lean into it, allow myself to grow into this new mindset, and stop pretending as though I know what my life is supposed to be like. Because none of us knows. We’re all pretending like we do, but we’re really just here for the ride.

We’re all growing into journeys we never thought we’d take. And that’s the messy beauty of it all.

March 31, 2018April 9, 2018

Expulsion from the Gardens

JoJo batted my leg; I didn’t have to glance at the clock to know it was pushing 8pm, her bedtime, and we still needed to go on one last walk.

But I felt the convulsing swell of tears bubbling up, taking me down, contouring me into a ball on my ottoman as I sobbed into clenched fists. This was it: the final expulsion of guilt, of anger—of the life I thought I was going to have.

Startled by the sudden, breathless tears, JoJo smacked my leg again, and nosed her way into my face. I rubbed her ears and looked around the small apartment illuminated by lamplight—pouring over green blobs, their delicate, arabesque tendrils frozen in a perpetual quest for the sun.

I thought I’d moved on; that’s what surprised me the most. But as I reflected on the past two years, I recognized I’d been spending so much time surviving, making do. Regardless of whatever form the tether took, I constantly found myself laden with the life I began in this state—suffocated by post-divorce debt and scraping by in a place that was supposed to be ours rather than mine, my social life atrophying with every declined invitation.

But this night, I felt free.

***

Hours before, I’d spent my last moments in Gay Gardens—thanking the little cottage for reminding me that I had the strength, confidence, and audacity to take those first terrifying steps toward building my new life.

I walked through every room, thinking back to the conversations, arguments—the dreams borne out of necessity and a deep wanting, all of which still require constant cultivation. And then I paused in the entryway—the door opened wide—and smiled back at how much the view had changed. Intermixed with exhaustion-fueled sadness was a growing sense of pride. We’d both emerged a little better than when we’d started.

In the weeks prior, I’d been informed that Gay Gardens wouldn’t be destroyed after all—at least not imminently. My efforts over the previous two years had not only resuscitated the cottage, but an interest by the landlord in managing the property responsibly. Once I handed over the keys, a month-long series of intense structural repairs would begin.

I hope you become something great.

Outside, I made one final circuit around the yard—lingering in the flower beds replete with irises and hyacinths; collecting branches that’d blown down, bundling them up, and tossing them into the woods; and ripping out a few resurgent briers, knowing I’d likely carry a few barbs back with me. I dusted off my hands and gazed back at the house, watching as petals from the flowering plum skittered across the worn brick patio.

Goodbye, you weird, beautiful place.

Walking up the wobbly staircase, I stretched out my arms and ran my hands along the large tree trunks growing through the railing, remembering how ivy-choked they’d been when I first descended into this overgrown jungle.

Breathe easy.

As my hand reached the end of the railing, I dug my nails in and then exhaled, propelling myself forward. I adjusted my rearview mirror, put the car into reverse, and promptly plowed into the anchored mailbox.

Befuddled by my absentmindedness, I eased forward, listening to the scrapes and pops—watching the mailbox shift back into place.

Fitting.

With the car idling, I dusted off the deep dent in the trunk—flecks of bright turquoise ground in: a subtle reminder of how every little thing shapes another, leaving glorious imprints.

***

Perched parrot-like on my reading chair, JoJo snorted, annoyed.

“Alright,” I huffed back.

Her ears pricked up, tail wagging wildly.

“Let’s see what’s out there.”

Walking through the apartment building’s deserted lobby, we emerged into the chilly night as two actors in this ever-unfolding sideshow.

Wandering down dark avenues, venturing toward shapeless lights. Marveling at the vacant spaces in between, glutted with potential.

March 13, 2018March 13, 2018

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.

January 24, 2018

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.

December 9, 2017

Beautiful Splinters

Outside, rain beat the last leafy hangers-on from their branches as rivulets cascaded down the clapboard, its longstanding paint bubbling out—lesions awaiting a lance. Overly-saturated potted plants brimmed with water as the unceasing rain fell down, down, down—quietly lingering in every one of the yard’s myriad depressions, slicking the pavers pocking the weed-cluttered, soggy grass.

Lamplight glowed dully, illuminating the living room, the air heavy with the smell of buttered, peppered eggs bubbling in the dented cast iron skillet. Laughter filled the house as my sister and I recounted past family foibles. And then, as we quietly watched JoJo bat around her toys, a nature-inspired metronome broke the silence.

Drip

Drop

Drip

Drop

Spanning a badly patched seam, a strand of rainwater dribbled down the sunporch wall, over a painting, and pooled onto the chipped, white floor. After wiping down the painting and shuffling it aside, I piled towels along the floor, and situated a bowl beneath the small bubble slowly expanding along the ceiling.

A few months ago, when I recognized that I couldn’t stay here, I realized why it was that I sequestered myself in this cracked, rotting shell in the first place—chose to stick with it for another year.

I needed to heal, rebuild, and transform myself. And Gay Gardens was my cocoon.

But as I watched the dripping slow, and the water pool in the shallow bowl, I recognized Gay Gardens had done her job; I chuckled quietly, and dabbed the water rings on the floor.

Over the past year and a half, this little cottage and I forged an imperfect, symbiotic relationship—and this marked the beginning of its graceful end.

***

Weeks later, my head was nearly inside the oven, my eyebrows level with the wiry heating element. JoJo puttered up and gave me intense side-eye until I retreated from my Sylvia Plath-inspired attempt at staying warm. I sighed, watching my breath cloud dissipate.

Hours before, at my behest, the handyman pounded on the hallway’s walls.

“Jesus, you’re right. This isn’t even lathe and plaster. It’s fiberboard. I’ve never seen it…at least not in a house anyone is still living in. I mean, wow. I bet you get cold.”

From beneath my hoodie and coat, I exhaled deeply in his direction, following the rapidly cooling cloud with a vacant stare until he continued with his line of questioning. Soon thereafter, he left, citing that he’d be unable to fix the heating system.

Roughly an hour before he arrived, an antique dealer perused furniture and haphazardly sorted collections of keepsakes earmarked for sale, cherry-picking pieces for his shop.

Once a curated refuge, Gay Gardens has quickly become a staging ground. The structure remains, rotting quietly, nobly. But the home I created has been reduced to piles of once cherished items, each sporting a fluorescent price tag—an intended passport to others’ waiting hands.

After he left and I drew up his list, I scanned a tabletop cluttered with planters. They’d been so vital when I moved here; I needed to plant things—watch them grow. Scouring deserted thrift store shelves, the warped cabinets of a hoarder’s house, I’d seek out chipped and worn, dust-covered planters and revive them. Filled them with soil and the hopeful starts of a new plant. I yearned to see the planters’ glazes glow in the sun, the tiny greens nested inside them slowly pushing upward, filling out their translucent tendrils, the ends dripping with nascent buds.

But now their vegetative charges would grow without me—under someone else’s dutiful gaze.

***

The night before my heating system failed, I sat on the sunporch floor, my hands shaking—hovering over the small, identically sized boxes labeled “Mementos” as JoJo dragged her bed closer to the spectacle.

Quite suddenly, I was awash with anxiety. Because I knew what was inside the boxes. They didn’t contain newborn velociraptors or pictures of Ron Pearlman dressed as Vincent from the eighties television series Beauty & the Beast. The menacing “it” they held was more biting, more terrifying: paper.

As I opened the first box, JoJo gently rested her paw on my hand. She stared intently, tears forming at the corners of her eyes as they always do. I nuzzled my head against hers and took a deep breath.

“Thanks, baby girl.”

And then I started ripping. Cards, Post-its, little musings and love letters I’d squirreled away were reduced to bits, quickly filling a garbage bag. Then two.

Hours later, I looked from the emptied boxes to my palms, cross-stitched with paper cuts—the last, necessary wounds to heal.

I have to make room for less in my life.

***

Condensation pooled along the weathered mullions, occasionally overflowing, collecting along the warped sills. The heat finally kicked on, and my sinuses flared in response. Beyond the clouded panes, a humungous neon star glowed atop the steel mill downslope, casting its white light up into the backyard.

As the wind moved through the trees, rocking them side-to-side, the diffused light fell upon the garden’s withered remains. The entrance door hung open—warped and water-bloated; the veneer cleaving from the hardy core. Soon, the walls will come down; they’ll be transformed into ad hoc displays featuring all the bits and bobs to be paraded out for the subsequent yard sales.

Between passing cloud banks, sunlight glanced across the turquoise kitchen wall, amplifying the brilliant greens and cool blues. I stood and stared—through the wall, into the not so distant future, where everything around me has been reduced to splinters that once framed a brilliant life chapter.

Photo description: A view from the living room into the hallway, which is painted bright turquoise.

We’re all fragments striving to piece together a life that, at least from the outside, appears fortified, secure; but the inside is sometimes empty, a looming vastness into which the echoes of dreams reverberate and quietly die.

And in this future ruin, I pieced myself back together—filled that emptiness with something meaningful. I didn’t cure an insidious disease or eliminate poverty. But I made this particular place better. And, in so doing, proved to myself that I could, once again, make it on my own—that though I may be fractured, my edges roughened by experience, I’ve embodied the beauty of this self-reflective process, and know that my subdued resilience helped me survive, and molded me into the person I’ve wanted to be.

And that’s something.

What lies beyond Gay Gardens is unknown—a cloudy picture at best. But within that mental frame and fog, I imagine about 400 square feet with my bed floating out from the wall, surrounded by the plants I’m able to bring along. There, JoJo putters from one sun spot to the next, stretches, yawns, and dozes off. A few other pieces of furniture are scattered around the studio apartment, their valuable surface space cluttered with greenery.

And I’ll be there, assessing my new beginning and willing goodness into it, as I frequently did as I hovered over my planters—the smell of damp potting soil filling the air, the blips of green poking out toward the rising sun.

And I will recognize that I, too, will keep bending toward the light.

October 24, 2017

Eden, Slipping

On the darkest nights, when the wind is howling through the tousled trees and leaves are rustling off their dripping branches—and the beams in the attic are groaning, popping from the barometric pressure and moisture—I feel as though this small cottage is a battered dinghy bobbing in a raging tempest. But somehow, its warped, wooden framing and patched, plastered seams always bolster it just enough—holding it firm, silently enduring the onslaught in the dark.

And then, hours later, as morning light diffuses through the seemingly impenetrable, gray cloud banks, I watch the once forceful rain drip lazily from scuffed eaves and rusted, leaking rain spouts.

Image description: a small cottage in the middle of a cleared terrace, with a stone path leading to it.

This, our home, has delivered us, its cargo, to another day.

***

As a kid, my overblown conception of a personal Eden featured a sprawling, multi-room Gothic mansion set in an open, browned field with trees lining its overgrown edges. Never did I imagine a small, dank cottage to supplant that fantasy.

When I think about the beauty of this place—what it has endured—I’m awestruck. Somehow, amid multiple housing booms and a changing skyline, it remained tucked away, sheltered behind behemoth rhododendrons and partially veiled with ivy. Coupled with pervasive rot, its decades-long neglect should’ve doomed it to become a mouldering, collapsed heap on the low, bramble-packed terrace.

And yet it remained upright long enough for a half-broken man and his faithful sidekick to move in and make it the best home they’ve ever had. But now, our time here is inching to an end.

I continue to water my plants, weed my flower beds—knowing that, as the tides swell and slowly pull this refuge from my grasp, I’ll be left unmoored in uncertain waters, reaching for a lifesaver. And honestly, I don’t know what it’ll look like.

My internal refrain has often been, As soon as you’re priced out of this home, that’s it. Back East you go. Mostly because the painful prospect of moving again is blunted by the comforting thought of returning to a place where I first made a home. But with no savings—and no ability to save—and no job prospects way over there, settling into a joyless, cookie-cutter studio miles away from the places I enjoy is my only recourse: debilitatingly sad, but pragmatic.

Seattle is lovely. It’s liberal. It’s scenic. There’s great thrifting. And it’s only a few hours away from Justin Trudeau. But I moved here coupled, with a fiscal buffer; together, it all worked—until we didn’t. Through a combination of begging my landlord and reducing every single expense I possibly could, I managed to pull this place—and myself—together over the past year. Always, though, the specter of another year loomed menacingly, with its associated cost-of-living spikes. But for a time, I was able to occupy my thoughts with surviving, rather than thinking about my imminent displacement as I’d done every moment since I’d taken over the lease. After all, I had another year, full of potential—something would come of my attempts to change my situation.

But here I am, slipping along the downward slope of my current leasing cycle, knowing that begging will do nothing now; even the slightest rental increase will make this place unreachable. The bubble continues to expand in Seattle, and there’s no cathartic burst in sight. With an entire paycheck consumed by rent, and the other pulled apart to satiate the utility, car loan, and credit card gods, I usually have between $5 and $15 left at the end of the month—and that’s if everything else stays consistent, which it never does. Unless you’re in corporate, being single in Seattle means you scrape by—you survive; you don’t live.

Seattle is no longer the grunge scene-inspiring, gritty city of the Cobain years. It’s now a polished playground for the rich—where upwardly mobile Millennials with six-figure salaries wave goodbye to longtime tenants and homeowners—most of whom are people of color who have to watch their neighborhoods be shattered by multi-million dollar box houses with Black Lives Matter signs posted out front, or re-zoned for massive micro-studio complexes.

I was silly to think I’d be an exception—that I, a relative newcomer, and of all the people displaced by Seattle’s boom, would somehow hold steadfast in my battered rental cottage against the raging tides of gentrification.

I fantasized about Gay Gardens being the place where I’d make it as a writer—no one famous, but earning just enough to stay put, save up, and buy this little place as ravenous Microsofties and Amazonians gobbled up everything around me. And then I’d slowly will my other dreams into reality.

I wouldn’t have to think about selling off most of my things just so I could afford to be displaced. I wouldn’t have to imagine the carefully crafted outdoor spaces I’ve built out of nothing being plucked apart by yard salers—bird houses and garden baubles and outdoor furniture snapped up like carrion for crows. I wouldn’t have to eventually hand over my keys and walk up the front stairs to a laden car, looking back over my shoulder at my Eden: the future site of million-dollar mansions. And I wouldn’t have to acknowledge that this place will soon be gone—face the imminence of a backhoe plowing headlong into the living room, its bucketed arm pivoting to level the tiny bedroom where I curled up my first night alone in five years and sank into the inky darkness of the forested hollow around me.

***

JoJo and I complete our around-the-house circuit, and as we reach the front patio, she stares up with her watery eyes, pleading for more time.

“Alright, we’ll go around again.”

Leaves cascade down from the gusting wind, their brittle edges reminding me that I won’t experience another fall here—staring out from the sun porch’s wavy-glassed windows while cradling a cup of hot coffee.

I’ll be somewhere else—probably in a large apartment complex in Tukwila with paper-thin walls listening to my neighbors squabble. But, with hope, in the depressing box that awaits me, I’ll be able to save enough money to pay off my credit card—racked with car repairs and heating bills rather than fanciful vacations and pedicures—and save enough money to move back to the East coast, or someplace I can actually live.

The wind nips my back as I run my hands along the weathered wood pallet garden wall. I clutch it hard, my knuckles turning white.

I wanted to build so much more here.

Back inside, as I warm her towels in the dryer, JoJo claws her way up into my lap. Her head, heavy with sleep, thuds quietly into my chest as she blows a snot-laden sigh into my orange cardigan.

I rest my chin on her tiny head, exhale deeply, and murmur through tear-clouded eyes, “Wherever you are is home.”

June 5, 2016

The Hard Stuff

Spiders cower in hole-pocked wall crevices. Bags overflow onto cluttered tabletops, computer cords dangling out like disemboweled hunt kills over long-neglected CD cases with 90s-era pop band icons plastered across their yellowed covers. Boxes packed and repacked line every available space – constant reminders of blocks to begin building new lives.

Birds chirp in the rising sun, and wind gusts through overgrown flowerbeds and hedges, creating the illusion of a giant, larval caterpillar undulating across the yard. Beside me, the tendrils of a newly sprouted plant shiver slightly, reminding me of all the cottage’s cracks and gaps I’ve yet to discover – known only by the cool morning air, the nests of freshly hatched brown spiders. It’s a little after 7:00, and the fragments of morning light refract in the jadeite mug I’m holding, offering very little in the way of welcoming warmth.

Staring out at the unkempt blackberry bushes and sprawling decades-old English ivy, I reflect on how much work there’s still to do to reclaim this little piece of existence from the bramble. The pink-tinged sky brightens a bit, and I tip back my mug, sighing heavily as I peer out into the jungle of weeds.

And then the clouds swallow up the light for a moment, and there’s just me – puffed hair and six-o-clock shadow reflected in the dirty window panes.

Still so much to do.

Somewhere in this mess is where I must begin again – suss out the cherished from the painful. All of it’s part of a new recipe, and I don’t know what I’ll make of it.

***

Not that long ago, I wrote that life is a string of unscripted, unknown experiences, from which we can either choose to grow or wilt. Lately, this phrase haunts my shallow sleep and momentary daydreams; it frightens me. It empowers me. And, at times, it crushes me.

Life has changed, and I must change with it.

Andy and I are separating. Albeit amicable, it’s still the hardest decision we’ve ever had to make.

I gulp a mouthful of cooled coffee, closing my eyes and letting my thoughts thread this new reality together as my body adapts to the daily machinations of fledgling routines.

Joanna stretches out in a patch of sun and stares up dreamily with a bloated breakfast belly. And I’m overcome.

I’m a ball of exposed nerves; daily minutiae can thrust me into a mental brier patch. But rather than fleeing from the welter of conflicting feelings, I have to embrace it all head-on – grapple with the hardship, ambiguity, terror, exhilaration, anxiety – and fashion a different future from it.

I must once again become my own knight in shining armor. And remind myself that I don’t need to be rescued – that I am enough.

July 17, 2015

There’s No Place Like Home

Good morning. Be advised: I’ve had coffee. You can approach.

As recorded in this un-posted post, I found Wednesday a little challenging:

Oh my gods. Do you ever just have those days where everything you do turns into a giant poo ball? WELCOME TO MY TUESDAY!

But really. It’s 11:30 and this is all I’ve accomplished:

(1) Sent a query.

(2) Wrestled sidewalk meat away from Toby.

(3) Sent the WRONG FUCKING cover letter for a particularly interesting job.

(4) Gone Devil Wears Prada on the asshat moving company that still owes us for fucking up some of our furniture.

(5) Deleted yesterday’s three job rejections, including the one for this job.

(6) Repeatedly screamed “FUCK the FUCKING FUCK!”

(7) Guzzled a pitcher of iced coffee.

(8) Realized that some people’s dogs on Instagram/Twitter/Facebook have more likes/followers than my blog.

(9) Read about a stay-at-home gay dad turned writer, checked out his Instagram feed, and was bombarded by shirtless photos that made me want to EAT A CAKE AND THROW IT UP JUST SO I COULD EAT IT AGAIN.

(10) TYPED EVERYTHING IN ALL CAPS.

I’m in such a foul mood. And the most annoying thing about it is that it’s one of those that I know I can snap myself out of, but I sort of don’t want to at the moment. I JUST WANT TO GIVE EVERYONE MY RESTING BITCH FACE AND END IT WITH AN ALL INCLUSIVE MIC DROP.

Not only did everything in the world rub me the wrong way, but I’d completely misplaced Wednesday.

source

I haven’t hidden the fact that moving to Seattle has been harder than I initially thought it’d be. I figured we’d land on our feet like we always have, and I’d snag one of the bazillion nonprofit development jobs floating around, and we’d live contentedly happy lives smack in the middle of Capitol Hill and marvel at the amazingness of life.

That’s just not how it’s panned out.

Granted, we like where we live and we’re constantly marveling at the amazingness of life, but we’re also aware that this move has drained us a bit. What’s more, it’s reminded us of what we’ve been missing, and what we want.

Last weekend we ventured out to immerse ourselves in Seattle’s LGBT community (after all, one of our goals before moving out here was to get more involved), and we figured we’d do that by going to visit the location of one particular organization that seemed to be a crazy-awesome hub for LGBT activism. So, fortified with coffee, we set out with equal parts exhilaration and anxiety – because starting over in a new place is always difficult, as is meeting new people.

We walked up, got excited by the fluorescent sign, swung open the door, and walked into a tiny room stacked with books – whose keeper was completely passed out at his desk. After tiptoeing around a bit, stoking the now smoldering embers of our excitement with the slightest fuel – LOOK, THEY HAVE AN OLD, YELLOWED COPY OF SUCH AND SUCH – we started heading for the door, at which time the attendant awoke. I asked him where the “larger center with which this place is affiliated” was located, and just got a blank stare in response. This was it. Thoroughly dismayed, we donated the few bucks we had in our wallets, thanked him, and left.

To the organization’s credit, it was there – present for the community as a resource and support; that’s incredibly important and I don’t mean to minimize it.

But the fact of the matter is, over the past few years, we’ve craved community on this coast and haven’t really found it. We’ve been fortunate enough to meet wonderful people and make a few friends. Still, even in the liberal enclaves, we’ve yet to encounter anything remotely as accessible, opening, and welcoming as the community-centric LGBT Center of Raleigh – where we met, and a place we love.

LA seemed more about appearance and income brackets than community.

Seattle seems more about fragmented, insulated social bubbles into which it’s nearly impossible to break.

Naively, we were expecting that same sense of community from our Raleigh days to be amplified in these larger, more liberal cities. Instead, it’s been the exact opposite. And the very particular sense of loneliness that’s resulted has been what’s been pushing us to move around, to find a fitting answer – even when the most logical solution has been staring us in the face.

Wednesday night, after Andy surprised me with tulips and a sweet card even though I was being a monstrous beast, we chatted over pizza and peach pie. And then watched Revolutionary Road. Whenever we’re thinking intensively about the future, and any big changes ahead, we always watch it.

We watched it when we decided to venture out to this coast.

So we watched it again when we decided to move back.

Wednesday was a big day.

***

So, we’re giving ourselves a year or so before we head back – after all, we just got to Seattle and there’s a lot of interesting stuff here to explore, and things to learn.

But there’s a certain sense of relief knowing that we’ll be returning to a place that’s felt more like home than anywhere we’ve lived – a place where we can make a difference, contribute to the community, and feel a sense of belonging that’s been so lacking out here. Plus, whenever we decide to become parents, we don’t want to raise our kid in a liberal bubble, but we also have to be somewhere where we, too, feel supported and at peace.

Until then, though, we’ll keep our heads up and enjoy our time out here – with our Raleigh goal always in sight. And while our journey on this coast may end, we’ll still learn plenty of lessons while we’re out here.

And gladly take them back home.

July 9, 2015

Downsizing Space, Upsizing Life*

The other day I was reading this hilarious tiny house post by the witty blogger behind Hipstercrite, and found myself screaming, “GODDAMMIT, YES!”

Let me first caveat this by saying that, like Hipstercrite, I wholeheartedly acknowledge all the positive things tiny houses represent: environmental conservation, recycling (e.g., you quite literally poo where you eat), de-materialism (it should be a word), blah blah blah good things. Hell, my parents live in a semi-subterranean, off-grid hobbit house in the middle of the woods. (But it’s more than one room.)

I get it. Being good to the earth is awesome.

But you know what else is awesome? Being good to yourself. Which means giving yourself space enough to think, eat, contemplate life’s mysteries, watch movies, and poo without the smell competing with the chili bubbling on the stove outside the tiny house’s bathroom “door” (it’s a curtain, y’all).

It’s no secret that I love talking and writing about design, mostly because I don’t know the professional ins and outs, and wing it whenever I’m decorating our apartment. But I have to say, if Andy and I ever moved into a tiny house, we’d probably end up getting a divorce approximately 6 minutes after walking through the door. (Although it’d probably make for good reality TV: Two Gays, One Tiny House, and An Obese Chihuahua: Who’ll Come Out On Top…or Dead?!)

We both love having our own space. Which is why our historic apartment in Raleigh was amazing. In fact, the other day Apartment Therapy re-posted our House Tour in their “Pride at Home” series following the SCOTUS decision. That was pretty awesome, not just for its timing and the fact I finally felt like an all-star, but also for the window it gave us into our lives a few years back.

We re-toured it, and remarked about how most of the stuff we saw has since been sold or gifted away. (And it also gave me an opportunity for ample self-loathing when I saw myself in those skinny pants, and my hippie hair. Oy!) Then we looked around our Seattle digs, and realized just how much we’ve downsized since moving from North Carolina to California to Seattle.

I mean, when we first landed in California, we were in a 450 square foot studio apartment in Koreatown, and most of our stuff was in a Gardena storage facility (oh, how little we knew the geography). Which, coming from our 1,100 square foot historic Raleigh duplex, felt like a glorified walk-in closet.

Thankfully, the only thing we did right with that apartment was sign a 6-month lease.

And then we were off to West Hollywood – a step up space-wise with an actual bedroom and generous living-dining room. Still, it was maybe 850 square feet – quite a bit smaller than what we were used to. Thankfully, it had a great deal of built-in storage – so all of our random crap (and some furniture) was stowed away.

But then Seattle happened. We loved the new-old space immediately. But when the boxes kept coming and coming and coming, and the movers bid me a “good luck” with nods to the cardboard box forest behind me, I realized that this apartment was quite a bit smaller than our WeHe digs. (We never knew how big our WeHo place was, because the square footage was never listed.)

Not only that, but we have one closet.

And when I mean one closet, I don’t mean one walk-in closet and five other closets.

I mean one closet in the whole apartment. Granted, it’s a walk-in, but when you factor in all of the random domestic detritus you always need but have to store (towels, blankets, clothes, coats, umbrellas, ironing board, cleaning products, that one box of holiday decor you allow your husband to have…), you need at least two closets. The only other “closet” we have is completely occupied by our stackable washer-dryer, for which I’ll gladly sacrifice the space.

Honestly, though, as annoying as it’s been having only one closet, it keeps us honest. No hoarding clothes or shoes or furniture. Our space is full enough now, so anything new we bring it means something else goes out.

Except for Fiesta. There’s always room for rare I-will-cut-you-for-that Fiesta pieces. (One of the main reasons why we could never live in a tiny house.)

We’ve culled a lot. And when I mean a lot, I mean that the only decorative stuff we have is what we see (except for some framed art under the bed – that ain’t going anywhere). And the only furniture we retained are pieces that pull double-duty, except for those necessary chairs. So our sideboards and cabinets hold dishes (all of which we use) and DVDs, and all of our clothes and shoes and coats and tools and gardening supplies are stored in the bedroom dressers and walk-in closet.

Even though this move was exhausting because of majorly downsizing, it was totally worth it. Do we love stuff? Absolutely. But we don’t need more of it to feel like we’ve succeeded in life, nor do we need a tiny house to convince us that we’re leading a quintessentially “simple life.”

And while this is the smallest apartment we’ve ever lived in (and will probably ever live in), it goes without saying that it’s still more than most folks in the world have. There’s something about living in a small(er) space that anchors this in the fore of my mind; it reminds me to be thankful for this little slice of life, and to cherish everything in it – because what we’ve chosen to retain is what we feel matters most.

Plus, it’s sort of fun transitioning formerly decorative stuff into the functional realm (e.g., the dough bowl that used to hold pine cones in my parents’ house, looked Spartan and old and beautifully empty in our WeHo apartment, and will now be turned into a container for a succulent garden in Seattle).

But there is such a thing as too small a space, and I need more than one pan to cook with.

My ideal is to have another bedroom for guests (or, you know, a kid) and another bathroom. (I also like to occasionally channel Mary-Louise Parker in The Client and tell Toby that all I want is “A little white** house with a walk-in closet.” (Nix the white.) It’d also be great not to have to design everything along a wall in our living room, but I’m done worrying about “design rules.”

I think our space works just fine, and doesn’t look half bad either. So while we won’t be investing in a tiny house anytime soon, I’ll take some of the tenets from that ascetic lifestyle and map it onto our slightly more material-bloated, less claustrophobic 745 square foot Capitol Hill perch.

After all, Toby’s not about to pare-down any of his toys.

(*I’m pretty sure upsizing isn’t a word. But it should be.)

April 16, 2015

Movin’ On Up. Literally.

We take the turn at 1.5 mph, and hear a bone-chilling clunk-crash-shatter that makes my heart skip a beat. But before we even turn around, Andy and I know what we’ll see.

The project piece we toted across the country, and which has stayed frozen in its “project” state, finally gave up the ghost – shattering to pieces in the back of the car.

I make a feeble attempt to piece it back together, but fail – the broken, newly glued shards slide off a half hour later onto piles of bagged clothes at the thrift store. Instead of slapping them back onto the drawer front, I just turn and run – as if I just lit a firecracker at a gasoline station.

“Go, go, go!”

From the driver’s seat, Andy raises an eyebrow. I jump in.

“DRIVE! The drawer fell apart.”

“Chill out. It’s not like they’re going to run after us screaming, ‘How dare you donate something!'”

True. I dust off my hands, but find them sticking together with residual glue.

“Oh well. The albatross is gone. At least we tried to do the right thing.”

We get back to the apartment and find Toby wiggling around, exceedingly thrilled that his car crate is hogging the space the desk had occupied an hour earlier. It’s something ridiculously minor – the absence of a piece of furniture.

But Andy and I know that this is something more – the start of yet another chapter.

I never thought I’d be the type of person who moved around every few years. Mostly because I loathed it, having been forced to do so as a shovel bum for most of my early twenties. But here we are, nearing our two year mark in California – and commemorating it with a move to Seattle.

And I couldn’t be more thrilled.

***

Right before we moved out here, one of our friends told us that her time in California was like a five-year dream. And it’s sort of been true.

I mean, California is beautiful, and LA isn’t as bad as everyone makes it out to be. Like any new place, we sometimes let the not-so-great things outweigh the good. It’s a big city – and living in a big, sprawling city can wear on you with its grit, noise, and general impartiality for your feelings. But being homebodies makes doing all the things a little difficult. I mean, I’m all about seeing the sights and visiting everything, but I’m not all about sitting in gridlock for hours to get 10 miles outside the city. And I can only tolerate so many TMZ bus oglers clogging the streets and sidewalks. I know, I know.

Wah, wah, wah! First World Problems!

So instead of pledging that Seattle is going to be our “place panacea,” I’m going to view this upcoming move as what it is: a new experience – an adventure. It could last a year or two and end with us returning to LA, or last five or ten or forever. Who knows? The unknown: it’s the part of the puzzle that drives me nuts in all the right ways, even as I’m literally driving toward it.

Like our move to California, our move to Seattle is a decision we made – not one that was made for us. And one of the greatest things that we learned from realizing our man-infested destiny out here was that we can make big changes and be alright. We don’t have to be comfortably settled to be happy. When that moving itch hits, sometimes you just have to scratch and relish the relief that comes with it.

Leaving a place is never easy.

We’ve done a lot in our short amount of time here: Andy switched jobs, I switched careers, we moved to WeHo, got married, cut up our credit cards, adopted Toby and Pearl, and decided that, one day, we’ll have a kid. Did we make a ton of friends and get ripped and have perfect tans 100% of the time? No. Is that okay? Sure.

What friends we’ve made and what we’ve made of our time here are what count.

Not doing those expected Cali things has taught us a lot about ourselves. We’re homebodies. We like movies, food, antiquing, and playing with our pup. We like being snarky and cynical while also trying to do our best to be good people and give back.

I’m done apologizing for not doing the things I’m expected to do, and I’m too tired to care what other people think about what I actually like to do. I’m ready for a change. And all of the life lessons I’ll learn in the process.

Way, way up there.

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