Tag Archives: growing up

When Your Bedroom Disappears

Posted on by under Guest, Losing Place

Days before, I found the phone number by searching the address on the Internet. A young woman answered, listened, and graciously agreed to give us a tour of our childhood home.

When the day arrives, my older sister and I drive familiar roads in a rental car. We’ve traveled from opposite sides of the country to this point in Illinois; she from Massachusetts, me from Colorado. Park Ridge is one big suburban grid of long, mature tree-lined streets and sidewalks on the northwest edge of Chicago. I roll down the window and whiff the familiar aroma of fresh cut grass mixed with airplane exhaust from nearby O’Hare Airport. It is the smell of roots and flight.

The rental car engine goes quiet by the curb in front of the two story brick bungalow at 704 South Crescent Avenue. Our parents raised the four of us kids here; three sisters and a brother. This was the address on all official forms and most letters addressed to me from 1973 to 1989; from Gerald Ford to George H.W. Bush.

We ring the doorbell on schedule, and a young, upper-class mom answers the door, smiles, and invites us in. We politely walk through renovated rooms where I am tossed between a sense of happy familiarity and disorienting displacement.

We walk through room upon room of fresh paint and updated designs: The front entry minus the cuckoo clock, the living room minus the teal carpet and large flowery wallpaper, the front sitting room minus the TV and plaid couch, the upstairs plus air conditioning, the kitchen plus new appliances and a stunning renovation. We linger in the kitchen and I notice the one big minus. They knocked out this wall, she points and explains, we wanted to make the whole space bigger. That wall once divided the kitchen from my bedroom. Every morning I used to lay in my bed on the other side of that wall, listening to my mom’s early morning WMBI radio programs and dishwasher clatter.

music-box-ballerinaNow the wall has disappeared and my bedroom evaporated entirely, replaced by functional upgrades and a redesigned floor plan. I lost the container that had been crammed full of my girlish years,

the hanging macramé plant holders,

clouds of Love’s Baby Soft Jasmin’ perfume,

the sound of tiny nocturnal pet hamster feet running on a creaking wheel,

the wind-up jewelry box ballerina spinning in front of a tiny mirror,

the puffy pink gingham quilt my mom sewed,

and the way I always slept beneath it facing the door,

the muted bass of bands like Boston booming from my brother’s bedroom,

a closet full of off-limits clothes my little sister borrowed anyways,

that one spot on the floor by the cast iron radiator where I sobbed over boys that I loved,

a secret drawer full of seashells and saved letters,

midnight poetry taped to my window.

Gone. The inner sanctum of my childhood entirely dematerialized.

Why do I feel so sad? It’s just a room, I say to my sister as we drive away. She nods. Gets it. Siblings hold pieces of each other’s’ history.

We head out of town and curve through neighborhood streets, past the red and white marquis of the Pickwick Theater and the stadium lights at Maine South High School. By that park swing, I feel the sway and twirl of the six-year-old version of myself. In that parking lot by the high school band door, I feel the wild heartbeat rush of my first kiss; under that one elm tree, the between-two-worlds melancholy of twenty-something. And somewhere around the corner on my way back home, I find the room of my childhood again.

Rooms are the containers that hold the past, for good or ill. They are the spaces that store roots and fragments of who we were, the lives we have lived. Writer, author, Frederick Buechner describes it this way:

“But there is a deeper need yet, I think, and that is the need—not all the time, surely, but from time to time—to enter that still room within us all where the past lives on as a part of the present, where the dead are alive again, where we are most alive ourselves to turnings and to where our journeys have brought us. The name of the room is Remember—the room where with patience, with charity, with quietness of heart, we remember consciously to remember the lives we have lived.” *

Sometimes my little sister and I end our texts or emails with the first line from Harry Connick’s song, “Forever, for Now.” “Meet me on the corner of close and soon,” we write. Then, “oxox” we sign off. Over the years, we’ve come to shorthand it. “Meet me,” we say and understand in a way only siblings can.

Meet me.

Meet me in the place with no address.

Meet me where the remnants of a past still live in pieces and fragments unclaimed, shared by few, in a room no longer contained by walls.

The name of the room is Remember.

* Quoted: Frederick Buechner, A Room Called Remember: Uncollected Pieces (1992)

*   *   *   *   *

unnamed-2“When Your Bedroom Disappears” is by Kelley J. Leigh. Kelley is a mid-life writer and mom of four sons.  Kelley’s home base is a quirky little mountain town in Colorado where she writes openly about intimacy issues and recovery in marriage and faith. Find her over at www.kelleyjleigh.com and on Twitter: twitter.com/KelleyJLeigh

 

 

The Rumor of Bears

Posted on by under Losing Place

My mother tells me that we only went to camp a few times before the tornadoes came.  How can this be? I remember it all so vividly. Then again, how could I forget a place so full of real and imaginary bears? I was only a young child.

‘Camp’ was my Uncle Davey and Aunt Sue’s hunting cabin in the northwest corner of Pennsylvania, generously shared with extended family like me, my mom, dad, and two little brothers. It was about a two hour drive, due north, on winding Allegheny mountain roads, and as a town kid from a smallish city, it was my very definition of middle of nowhere.

When dad turned off the paved road and onto gravel, I knew we were almost there. Now the real adventure began–the rutted road was barely driveable, and our van inched and bounced along until the green and white cabin was in sight. Camp! Camp! Let us out! We pulled onto the grass (there was no driveway), fell out of the van, and begged my parents to hurry-up-and-unlock-the-door. Inside the musty smell of damp wood, un-aired linens and old furniture filled our nostrils, and my brothers and I ran through the three small rooms, drinking in everything familiar and forgotten.

At camp, there was no running water, so we carried jugs down to and up from the spring.  At camp, there was no television, so we hiked to the big rocks, went spotting for deer, and cooked mountain pies in the campfire coals. At camp, there was an outhouse, so you ‘held it’ through the night and held your breath during the day.

And just behind this outhouse there were berry bushes, frequented–it was said–by black bears. Early in the morning, I would wake up, wishing-with-all-my-might for an indoor bathroom, and picture them–hiding behind the outhouse, waiting for me.

Despite the rumors, I never saw a bear in those berry bushes, or (thank the Lord in heaven) in the outhouse. To see a real Pennsylvanian black bear, I had to wait until we ran out of milk and bread. Then we climbed back into the van and bounced our way to the store.

The closest convenience store doubled as a mini-zoo, with animals in cages in the parking lot. There was a fox who was always hiding, and friendly deer you could feed. There were several other smaller animals I have forgotten completely, and there were… bears. Two bears, in steel cages, pacing back and forth, tracking us with small round eyes. Stay close to us, my parents warned, though the bars were thick and the bears well-fed. We stayed close. For a time.

When I was about seven, the bears were suddenly gone, and my parents said they heard someone shot them ‘out of pity.’ Shot them out of pity? This made absolutely no sense to me. If someone was so worried about the bears, why didn’t they just let them go? My parents just shook their heads sadly and let go of their tight grip on our hands. Go on, they said gently, go see the deer. After that, we still came to get our bread and milk, but the parking lot wasn’t so magical anymore.    

I was left only with the rumor of bears. And soon, I was left only with the rumor of camp.

On the last day of May in 1985, a week before my eighth birthday, twenty-one tornadoes touched down in Eastern Ohio and Western Pennsylvania. One of these raced through the woods behind my aunt and uncle’s hunting property, shifting the cabin two feet on its foundation, disappearing the outhouse, and turning over the berry bushes. The cabin was spared, but ‘camp’ was ruined.

We visited only once after the tornadoes came, and I can still see it all with my eight-year old eyes. The mountains, stripped bare. Trees turned into toothpicks; trailers flung like toys across the fields. The root balls of the trees towered above my head, ugly and unbelievable, and we couldn’t hike to our beloved big rocks because of all the destruction, blocking every trail. Thirty years later, I’m still not sure I’ve gotten over the shock.

Where can the bears live in a such a world?

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Photo by Jethro Taylor

 

The Grown Up

Posted on by under Guest, Losing Place

Two years ago, I entered adulthood. Not by virtue of turning eighteen; I’d already done that. I found myself at thirty-one, untethered. Until then, I’d led a life of quiet habit and order, hoping that eventually I’d be recognized as a great talent. But I tired of waiting and so I quit my normal routine, church, and several lifelong friends.

There were now gaps in my weekly habits. I went around industriously filling them up by hanging out with people I hoped would become my friends, getting involved in bad romances, and spending money I didn’t have. I tried to get several people to marry me. Along the way I learned that the last thing that will endear you to someone is to suggest marriage in the first three weeks of a relationship.

My problems were threefold: I was not married (and badly wanted to be), I was a writer who did not write, and I was not in the kind of job I dreamed, when I was in college, that I’d have at thirty-one. Instead, I worked in a sleepy realty office, reading ebooks all day long, and dreaming of being the next Barbara Pym.

I tried to solve these problems by switching to a new job in downtown Hartford that promised a more lively environment, and moving back to my parents’ house. I’d spent the previous five years with roommates who married and moved regularly, which meant I always had to find a new place to live. Living with my parents again—in the basement no less—felt like a big step backwards. I continued seeing one of the well-intentioned but frightened men I was trying to convince to marry me.

But what had happened? Why had my life curdled and become so wretched? Why was I walking around in a desolate daze of dreariness?

Most days at at my new job, in the well-appointed office on the eleventh floor of a posh skyscraper, I forced back tears while balancing spreadsheets. My job performance suffered, something that had never happened before. I grew despondent.

I could not sleep, partially due to perpetually analyzing my life with its dearth of accomplishments and partially because I spent most of my non-work hours with the boyfriend I was afraid to leave alone for fear he’d have time to assess me and conclude we’d be better off apart.

I wanted peace, but I was heading toward an internal crisis of massive proportions. It was like drowning but not wanting to call attention to the shameful fact that I couldn’t swim.

Finally, in a fit of desperation, I told the boyfriend that I needed to be alone for good. I told my bosses I would start work an hour later in the mornings and make up for it in the evenings—I decided that time to read and write in the mornings was essential for my recovery. I began reading Madeleine L’Engle’s book Two-Part Invention, a memoir of her early artistic development and later marriage to her husband, the actor Hugh Franklin. I began writing in earnest. I began to listen to the advice of my worried parents asking me to sleep and eat more and go to writers workshops.

photo-1428790067070-0ebf4418d9d8The nascent grown-up in me began to move, struggling for breath and life.

I had tried to extend my adolescence for years: the naive expectation of what I thought life should  be. I thought it’d be an easy, pain-free way toward accomplishment, like the stories of people getting discovered by a famous producer and becoming famous overnight.

I quietly put the adolescent away in a shopping bag I used to deliver used clothes to the thrift store. She would be happier companioning a younger person, anyway.  

My grown-up was far more peaceful than the adolescent had been. Yet real peace was elusive for me. I think it is stated best by Gerard Manley Hopkins who wrote: “O surely, reaving Peace, my Lord should leave in lieu/ Some good!/ And so he does leave Patience exquisite,/ That plumes to Peace thereafter”. I clung to patience as a new adult. Peace could come later after patience laid its groundwork. Patience helped me start writing a book. Patience sat with me when loneliness made its frequent visits.

My grown-up showed me how to sit, to work, to choose to be alone, to be silent sometimes, to avoid bad relationships, to say “no thank you”. She showed me how to accept sleep as a friend and not a thief of time. To not get tipsy every time there was wine present. She showed me the promise of good work that only my hands could do.

****

image1 (1)“The Grown-up” was written by Elena Shekleton. Elena lives in Denver with her husband, the artist Dan Sorensen. She is currently working on a novel and a book of fairy tale short stories. Elena loves hiking in the Rockies, and exploring the breweries and book shops in her city.  Her apartment is now free of roaches.  

Baby Season

Posted on by under Season & Place

I dreamed last night that I had a brand-new baby girl.

The dream wasn’t all snuggles and coos—it definitely included some bizarre elements, as dreams do. I was, for instance, somehow surprised by the arrival of this baby, even though it seemed clear in the dream that I had given birth to her, not adopted or found her wrapped in blankets in a cardboard box on my doorstep. My level of surprise about the baby was palpable in the dream, but I knew enough to hide my astonishment from others. I calmly went along caring for her and showing her off to friends as if I, too, had been expecting her all along.

Because I wasn’t actually expecting this baby, Dream Me had to improvise a bit to get her properly clothed and geared up. A significant scene in the dream involved me pulling big plastic bins off a top shelf in an enormous closet to look through the clothes my two real-life daughters wore as newborns.

One such bin exists in a (much smaller) closet in my waking life. It’s filled with the tiny shoes, Easter dresses, and footed pajamas deemed Most Special, along with handmade gifts like the pale blue cardigan my grandmother knitted for my firstborn, with its kitty-cat buttons and row of silhouetted white cats along the border. But in real life, I haven’t looked through that bin for probably a decade—not since that moment when I somehow knew my baby days were over, prompting me to sort all the little clothes into two piles: items to pass along to friends having babies, and favorite treasures to carefully pack away and keep.

When I woke from the dream, I was filled with longing, love, and loss. This might not seem at all surprising to most people, but it completely surprised me. I have never been a woman who longs for babies.

Of course, an entire season of my life was devoted to babies. It’s a season I treasure and wouldn’t trade for the world, but mostly because it is a necessary season for all who want to have children who will some day not be babies. The Baby Season was simply the first stage of parenting—the inevitable season leading to all of the seasons that follow.

*   *   *   *   *

Every parent, if they’re being honest, will admit to having favorite (and least favorite) seasons of parenting. Yet somehow I’ve always felt guilty for not being baby-crazy. It’s almost as if not getting the “uterus aches” that other women talk about when they see newborns knocks your womanhood status down several notches and calls your maternal instincts into question.

Don’t get me wrong—I loved my own babies fiercely. (For those of us who are not “baby people,” our own babies defy that category). But I don’t remember thinking “I never want them to grow up!” I loved the experience of nursing my babies (and I did nurse them each for about 13 months—does that earn me extra credit?), but I don’t recall a heart-rending pull as my babies began to rely less on my milk, eventually weaning without a fuss.

Instead, I was happy to see them grow into unique little personalities, with opinions and relationships and senses of humor. I loved watching them develop friendships and put feelings into words as toddlers, then problem-solve, create, and become more independent as they ventured through their preschool years.

During my daughters’ elementary school years, I was forever fascinated by the glimpses of myself and other family members I saw in my girls, and was equally fascinated by the many facets of them that seemed to crystalize out of nowhere. And the ways my two children are different from each other—two girls created from the very same gene pool!—has never ceased throughout the years to be amazing, refreshing, and challenging all at once.

*   *   *   *   *

Today my daughters are 17 and 14, both in high school. There’s no doubt I’m in a different season of parenting. Along the way I’ve loved many of the stages—six and 18 months were ages I savored, along with their preschool and mid-elementary years—but I have to say the particular season we’re in is one of my favorites. It’s also possibly the hardest (teenage girls!). And it has occurred to me several times that those two opposing feelings—the love and joy as well as the stress and challenges—are in fact intimately bound together. Everything is intense, on both ends of the spectrum. Preparing girls to go into the world as women, sure of who they are and what they are capable of, is no small task. It’s both exciting and difficult, like all of the best adventures.

And as I consider last night’s dream, I’m also realizing how very bittersweet this season is—much more so than I want (or have the time and emotional space) to admit in the day to day. It’s more bittersweet than weaning my babies, or packing their tiny shoes away into plastic bins.

Yes, as parents we’ve been preparing our daughters for independence all along, but these are the years when it gets real—not only in how their experiences and our conversations will prepare them for what’s next, but also in the ways “what’s next” will impact me. I can begin to envision a time when our household won’t strain at the seams to contain the whirlwind of kinetic energy that exists between 6:45 and 7:45 each morning; when the pile of shoes by the front door will diminish in number as well as colorful variety; and when the dishwasher won’t be packed full after a single family dinner with everyone at the table.

photoIt’s true, I’ve never wished my daughters could remain captured in a state of babyhood. But they are still my babies. No matter how grownup they become, they’ll still embody all of the love and longing of the seasons we’ve been through. And as we rush through these final years of childhood, the baby in my dreams reminds me that it’s OK to pause—to long to bundle them into footed jammies and enfold in my arms.

 

Scarves & High Heels: The Layers of Personal Geography

Posted on by under Guest, Role & Place

I was fresh out of grad school and decided that if I just wore high heels and scarves I’d be taken seriously in the classroom. Because at 5’2″ and just a few years older than my college students, I needed something to communicate big words like “authority” and “stature” and “smart” and “serious.” I walked around that campus with the air of someone who knew what she was about, who knew her subject matter and who knew how to teach.

But I felt like I was playing a giant dress-up game called life.

And then real life happened, by which I mean, life in the dailyness of washing dishes, and learning how to love, and making the bed, and grocery shopping. Life full of the glorious mundane. And then there is the life that happens when you add lives to your own, and spend your hours changing diapers, and making dinner, and trying to make meaning from the crying, the napping, and developmental milestones.

So slowly, as we moved from Los Angeles, to San Diego, to Salt Lake City, and as I moved from student to professor to mother, this “game” of life took on a bedrock finality where I had to concede I was, in fact, grown up. I didn’t need high heels or tomes on my bookshelf. I had a mortgage and a minivan full of kids to prove it.

It just took me to my mid-thirties and seven moves—one international—to begin to feel at home in myself.

Each place has whittled me down based on who I am becoming in each place. As I turn the pages of my past selves, each place holds for me a tender space with an accompanying nostalgia akin to flipping through old photo albums. Each place gives a geography to the chapters of me.

Each place we’ve lived has shown me more of who I am and more of who God is. Each has evidenced a terrible beauty. The painful beauty of becoming. Every home has shown me how wide and deep the Kingdom of God is and that there are good gifts in each spot; that there are always people who need you and whom you can connect to one another. Each place has stripped me a bit bare.

Los Angeles laid claim to my know-it-all-ness, as I put on my grad school knowledge like a scarf and found it lacking. For all the learning in the world couldn’t tell me about marriage, and sacrifice, and how to balance work with new motherhood. San Diego showed me my idol of my self-sufficiency as I floundered with two children under two. I felt helpless and at sea, having left the pats-on-the-back of academia and instead, spent my days pushing a double stroller up and down hills at the zoo.

And now, in what many consider the conservative capital of the US, I have been given bravery in Salt Lake City. It’s a city dominated by the LDS temple, the center point around which the city’s grid system is based. And yet, there are other factions which orbit that hub—factions that challenge, and augment, and move gracefully around the dominant religious culture. It’s made being a Christian here something exotic; and even with the pressures of four children, a college ministry and a dominant religious culture of which I’m not a part, Salt Lake City has birthed my voice.

Places do that. They push and pull at who we think we are and stretch us into who we are becoming.

Places, if we let them, usher us into a multi-orbed story, where in each new place we carry our past layers, have the freedom to shed some old ones, and to don new ones.

Places finally take up residence in our souls, not for their amenities and attractions, but for how they birth us into new people. And how, after awhile, we can look back at each place with a certain fondness after the terror of becoming has abated.

So as I string those dear places together—as connected dots on a world map—I’m reminded that there is no space that is too unlovable, too hard, or too unattractive. And, as we anticipate another move this summer, I’m looking forward to another dot on the map that I will weave my story around, and in whose stories I will be woven.

*   *   *   *   *

ashley

“Scarves & High Heels” was written by Ashley Hales. Ashley is passionate about helping others to tell their scary brave stories. When she’s not stealing time to write at Circling the Story, she’s chasing her four kids or helping out with her husband’s college ministry in Salt Lake City, Utah. She also holds a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Edinburgh. You can read more of Ashley’s work on her blog, or follow her on Twitter or Facebook.

 

Fill in the Blanks

Posted on by under Role & Place, Uncategorized

If you had told my seventeen-year-old self what she would grow up to be, I think she might have cried. But then again, she never knew half as much as she supposed.

It all began early. In second grade I was set apart as “gifted.” Practically, this meant I stood waiting in the school stairwell on Thursday mornings, with a little boy name Todd, and a mini-bus came and delivered us to a neighboring school. It was the best part of my week. There, waiting in the library, were several other children, word puzzles, art materials, floppy disks labeled “Oregon Trail” and “Turtle LOGO”, and a magical teacher who made learning seem like play.

As school progressed, I rode the wave of privileges and honors. When I was in fifth grade, they let me assist the kindergarten teacher, in junior high I chose among special electives that were only available to kids ‘like me’. By the time I got to high school, I was enrolled in A.P. Everything, heading for Governor’s School, and chosen as a National Merit Finalist.

I was so very impressive back then.

****

When I was seventeen, I wanted to be an elementary school teacher when I grew up. And so I chose a college, and everything went swimmingly for about two years. But my interests were broad–or maybe I should say ‘scattered’. Toward the end of my junior year, I added some religion courses and decided not to student teach.

And with this choice, I stepped off the marked path, and began wandering in my very own vocational wilderness. Eventually I would end up in seminary, still longing for the day when I could finish this sentence: “I’m a _____________.”

If it wasn’t “I’m a teacher,” it could be “I’m a pastor.” Right?

But then our lovely, miraculous and terribly inconvenient babies were born. We welcomed two little girls, in two years. As graduation approached and I was changing diapers while learning Greek conjunctions, the thought of ordination exams-or a role as a full-time pastor-was more than I could bear. Again, I chose to get the degree without the title.

And again, “I’m a _____________,” was an open-ended statement. Sure, I could say, “I’m a mother,” but many of my friends were mothers and _____________. I had no “and.”

Without a professional certification, there was no point in getting a job just for the sake of getting a job. I made less per hour than we paid our babysitter. If I stayed home, the numbers worked. But still, it gnawed on me. How could it be that the little girl who was so smart, so full of promise, could grow up to become… me?

****

Here is a true statement: we would never talk to our friends the way that we talk to ourselves.

Did I consider my fellow stay-at-home-mom friends “failures”? No, of course not. They were making choices within a specific season of their lives. They were blessed to have spouses who made good salaries, allowing them to focus on their young children. They were doing what they needed to do, as were my friends who pursued their professions.

And I soon learned that the grass wasn’t greener for my “mother and _____________” friends. Their paths were not as straightforward as they seemed. Some alternated between full and part-time, and many felt as if they did everything, but couldn’t do anything well.

It seemed that we were all making this up as we went along.

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photo by Niklas Fridwall

As my children have grown older (both are in elementary school this year), I have added hats along the way. Two years ago I took a part-time job as a secretary, working for an organization and with people I love. I’m also (as you may have noticed) writing, or rather trying-to-write while volunteering at my kids’ schools, leading a community Bible Study group, and being the “on call” parent for snow delays, sickness, after-school activities, and random inservice days.

It’s good. It’s busy. It’s worthwhile. However.

The most difficult part of all this is that it is almost completely volunteer. Not getting paid is a blow to my ego, makes our finances tight, and sometimes makes me feel as if I’m not a real, contributing grown-up. Now again, would I ever tell a friend that you “are” what you “make”, or that volunteer work is worth less than paid work? No.

But there are times, many times, when I still find these thoughts needling into my sense of who I am. Especially when I am tired, or a child is screaming, or some activity was a disaster, or a blog post fell flat, my seventeen-year-old self sits on my shoulder and says unhelpful things like, “We could have been someone, you know.”

And I just nod, wearily, and say, “I know. I know.”

But when I recover, usually after getting a good night’s sleep, I also know that being a grown-up is more complicated than I ever imagined it would be as a child. And then, ironically, I often remember a picture that was posted in the halls of my daughter’s elementary school, a picture that stopped me in my tracks.

The kids were asked to complete this sentence, “When I grow up, I want to be a __________” and then draw a picture of themselves in this role. Down the row there were firefighters and teachers, police officers and dancers-all the typical kid answers-but the one that stopped me said this:

“When I grow up, I want to be a woman.”

And underneath this sentence was a smiling stick figure. I suppose it was a picture of me.

Moving House

Posted on by under Guest, Out of Place

Late last year, I attempted to move into a house not owned by my parents. I sat down with a potential roommate (a friend of a friend) and we established that although we were strangers, neither of us was too strange.

I began to haunt Craig’s List for homes in our price range (which was somewhere between “it has a lot of personality” and sleeping with a gun).

I fell in love with the first house we saw. It was over a hundred years old with beautiful wood floors and a mantelpiece. There was an enclosed porch on the second floor and I could just see my writing desk there with a cup of tea on it, curling steam.

“I want this little yellow house,” I said, after the current renter had left and my not-yet roommate and I were left alone in my car.

“You can’t fall in love with the first place we go,” he said.

But I did.

At my insistence, we drove to the property management company and even began to fill out applications before we realized that the numbers didn’t add up. To qualify to rent this house, we would need another roommate, at least (and it had been hard enough to find each other). Still, I kept hoping.

*   *   *   *

We walked through apartments which looked as though they hadn’t been redone since the seventies (with prices to match). We toured buildings with tiny washing machines, and pools in the complex, and the chance of a garage (if there was a vacancy).

The whole process made me tired, and I kept thinking about that little house.

*   *   *   *

“Apartments are fine,” I said. “But houses just have so much more character, don’t you think?”

We had just realized that we were truly torn over something important. I wanted wood floors, he did not. We were both convinced that the other simply didn’t understand the facts.

“Sure,” he said. “But there’s so much more to take care of in a house.”

He didn’t get it. After years of living in places I couldn’t control, I wanted someplace to care for, some place to love.

“Let’s just see,” I said. “Maybe if we find the right house.”

*   *   *   *

I went to our last showing alone. I didn’t intend to, but my would-be roommate got lost. So, I stood in another little yellow house (apparently I’m strangely drawn to yellow houses) and chatted with the representative of the management company, trying desperately to act like I knew what I was talking about as I asked questions.

StricklandhouseThere are lots of different kinds of little yellow houses. As I think back on it now, with its empty laundry room, draped with blackout curtains and central hood location, this one would have made a good drug house.

This little yellow house, a bit worse for wear, was across the street from the Salvation Army, and two buildings in from Planned Parenthood.

There was a handy bus stop on the corner, and several inexpensive Chinese restaurants close by.

I don’t know if it was the pedestal sink in the bathroom, the bright orange bedroom (with a walk-in closet) or the wood floors, but I found myself asking about the next steps in the application process.

My roommate arrived after the agent had left, and we peeked in the windows. The paint was peeling and chipped, the interior was dark, and the windows were leaking heat faster than it could be generated.

For some reason, we decided to apply to rent it.

*   *   *   *

If warning bells were ringing then, I didn’t hear them.

This was it, we were getting our little yellow house.

We signed the papers and picked up the keys. It was the week of Christmas, and my brother was in town to help me move my belongings from one home to another.

I moved my things, but planned to stay at my parents’ through the holidays.

My roommate moved in with his brand new set of early Christmas Tupperware.

*   *   *   *

I began to unpack, a little each day, setting up my bed, and hanging my clothes in the closet. I thought I was emotional from all of the transition, but as I smoothed my duvet and placed my new set of knives on the counter, I couldn’t shake the lump in my throat. I didn’t open the knife package, I couldn’t bear to put them in the sticky, hand-painted drawer.

I was nervous about going to the house alone at night. I would reach out to my roommate, first, to make sure he was there, or take my brother with me. I would put on a record, and turn on all the lights, hoping I would get used to being on my own.

But something wasn’t right.

It wasn’t long before I started getting texts from my roommate. They were low-key at first. Don’t cook anything. There might be mice. I haven’t seen any.

But things escalated quickly, as they often do.

He called our contact at the management company. She offered to bring mouse traps.

There are mice everywhere.

I called him, after that, and he told me about the nest in the stove, the droppings all over the counters. I thought about the evidence I’d seen in my closet.

Before I knew it, we were on the phone with each other, and then the property managers, trying to break the lease we had signed days earlier.

When it was done, and we were free, my almost-roommate moved back home to another city. I sat amidst the boxes in the room that had always been mine, in my parents’ house, and cried.

 *   *   *   *   *

Strickland“Moving House” was written by Cara Strickland. Cara has lived in San Diego, California, London, England, and Upland, Indiana. Once, in college, she wrote an essay saying that she was from Narnia. She currently lives in Spokane, WA, in a wonderful little house with wood floors and a purple porch, where she is a writer, blogger, editor, and food critic.