Tag Archives: home

I’d Rather Mop My Church Than Go Home

Posted on by under Mess & Place

Every Saturday afternoon our church gymnasium transformed from a basketball court or hockey “rink” into a sanctuary. In fact, our church was little more than a gymnasium with a maroon floor and a few offices with thin carpets around it. If our church youth group was in charge of church set up in the afternoon, we’d sometimes play hockey in the morning, go out for lunch (Wawa hoagies were my personal favorite), and return to help with the set up.

However, some Saturday afternoons I joined adult home groups and Sunday school groups at church as they hauled out racks of chairs manhandled the wooden platform into place. I gravitated to the large wet mops that followed the dust mops along the floor, leaving a smooth, shining surface before we did the heavy lifting with the chairs and section dividers.

church seats-yahI’d also tag along with the church janitor if he ever needed a hand. I’d become so accustomed to helping out that when he went away on vacation, he hired me to take over for him. I brought along two friends who split the pay but made the work go much faster. This earned me a key to the church while still in high school.

There’s no denying that I like a tidy space. I like things in their place. I’m that person who rearranges the dishwasher with the big plates in the back, small plates in the front, bowls in the top center, and glasses on top sides. I’m the sweeper and the arranger of stuff in our home for sure, and I embrace that role. That isn’t all of it.

My high school years were tumultuous and divisive. Life at home was full of highs and lows. I didn’t just find friends or community at this Baptist church down the road from our house. I found a peaceful sanctuary. I wonder if I instinctively knew that I could relax in my church. It didn’t matter if I was listening to a sermon, playing hockey, or mopping the floor.

Looking back, I can see that I needed a place to be at rest, and when it feels like a divorce is tearing everything at home to pieces, it can be quite restful to set up a gym with 400 chairs in a semi-circle with a group of friends—or strangers. It doesn’t really matter. For some reason there’s nothing like walking into a dusty, chaotic gym and turning it into a clean, orderly space with carefully arranged rows of chairs and a backdrop of fake plants.

Mind you, I wouldn’t have complained if my church had sped up its transition into more contemporary music. In retrospect, the most relevant and relatable aspect of my church was the way I always felt welcome and at home. I’m sure our janitor could have worked a little faster without me tagging along, and I’m sure those set up crews didn’t need me to mop or set up chairs.

They didn’t need me, but they always welcomed me.

I just had to show up ready to use a mop or a move a few chairs.

I’ve read a lot about children who have parents go through a divorce and how they need an anchor. They need a stable place or relationships where they can feel a sense of peace and stability. For me, it was my church. My church was far from perfect, but for a season when I needed an anchor, it provided one when I needed it the most.

*****

Ed bio YAH

While We’re Renting

Posted on by under Finding Place

IMG_1415

Old houses have a way of making themselves dirty, they crumble pieces of rusty radiators and cracking tile grout. My husband and I rent a place like this. In beams of sunlight, I can track fuzzy dust trails intertwined with all kinds of hairs and particles from disintegrating flooring. Clumps cling to the baseboards and slip under doorways, blown by invisible air currents.

After living here for well over a year, certain quirks get my particular attention. I can get quite distracted by the kitchen flooring, a 1980s white linoleum that turns mop heads and rags black, even on the tenth scrub. The dirt captured by its textured surface has been sealed in by grease and time, yielding just enough to fool me into thinking I’ve made progress by attacking it on hands and knees.

Under the cabinets, the edge of the linoleum curls up, a page of history begging to be turned. Splattered, brown grime creeps up in the crevice between the base of the cabinets and the well-worn flooring. This inevitably sends me into panic, a deep heaving, sweaty fear of mold and the other things that lurk in nooks and crannies.

We have made small improvements on the house, ones that seem appropriate for those only leasing the property. There’s the shower; I cried the first time I used it. We worked for hours with an X-ACTO knife to remove the floral grips someone had stuck on the floor of the tub now outlined with black and dark shades of green. Drew squirted a squiggly line of caulk over the deep crack between the tub and shower wall.

IMG_2120We tackled the back porch in the spring, removing the calico of welcome mats and rugs covering the floor and stapling down a single sheet of indoor/outdoor carpeting. We’ve replaced the light fixture in the bathroom, painted a yellow stripe around the wall in the dining room, and hung some heavy shelves on the plaster walls. And yet, sometimes even our elbow grease seems too much to give to this place that isn’t ours. The landlord seems determined to run his property into the ground, which is working because some of the house is literally sinking.

I tire of the sense that I live a collapsible life, the kind I’ve lived since leaving for college. My existence feels cobbled together from Swedish-named IKEA parts, propped up picture frames, and other signs that I will leave each room without a trace.

We will be renting for a long time. Financial experts have advised some millennials to never buy at all, offering online calculators and formulas to figure out if owning property makes sense in their financial bracket and geographical location.

But, I was raised to want land. I’m a midwestern girl, descended from European immigrants clamoring for a new start and middle American farmers who didn’t have running water, but owned a homestead and a clump of pear trees. The residue of my ancestors’ dreams still course through my veins, and before we go to bed each night, I speak of a future home like a promised land: “When we own a house someday…”

And now a baby is entering into this equation, and I’m more lost than ever. In the early days of sickness and fatigue, I’d lie in bed unable to tend to the everyday messes of dishes and dirty clothes. I watched shows on television where families knocked down walls and pried up carpet floors, installing subway tile backsplashes and farm basin sinks.

I’d walk into our kitchen holding my breath to avoid the odor of the rotting vegetables going to waste from our CSA due to the preferences of my nausea-riddled stomach. I couldn’t even take care of this place, it’s crumbs growing greater than its charms. I resisted planning the nursery. I resisted the stacks of paper and piles of former teaching supplies. I refused to make this home.

But a few weeks ago, a dear professor passed away at forty two, reminding me that we are all renters on this earth, exiles planting gardens and pouring cement foundations for temporary shelters. The night after Dr. Foster died, I moved closer to Drew in our bed, suddenly feeling like this might be our last moment on earth.IMG_1556

I realized how much I’ve held myself back from the places I’ve rented, refusing to be wasteful with transient things. But perhaps, in doing so, I’ve been truly wasteful, letting days and years slip through my fingers.

I lay my palm across Drew’s chest and in his sleep, he lays his palm over mine. I feel his inhale and exhale of breath. Home is here, this bed could be anywhere.

Why do I worry about the peeling linoleum or whether it’s worth it to paint the walls grey? Moving is in the future, now we are here, now I’m feeling Drew’s heartbeat and hearing the faint beginnings of his snoring. Part of me wants to stay up all night, feeling life in my love, but my pregnant body grows tired of my left side.

I pry my hand from his sleepy grip and turn over, now listening for the rise and fall of my own breathing. As I drift off to sleep, time seems such a fleeting thing, and I resolve to make this our home, even if it feels like we’re squatters.

Let’s dig a hole in the back yard, I think,  and lose our security deposit because we danced so much on the floors they’ve bowed under the weight of our living and breathing. Let’s carve our names in the closet and leave the baby’s height etched into a doorway. Let someone else paint over our memories, let them last for a second as we throw the dust of this life as confetti.

 

***

Meredith bio YAH

My Town

Posted on by under Finding Place

When I was seven, my parents packed up two U-Hauls, myself and my 5-year-old brother. We drove three days from San Diego, my birthplace, to our new home in Spokane, Washington.

Spokane is on the eastern side of Washington State, the side everyone forgets is here. Around election season, the majority put up conservative signs. On this side of the Rockies, there is a desert. It rains, but not frequently.

For a long time, I thought that I would grow up and move away from Spokane. Before college I was in love with the idea of moving to Paris and writing in cafés like Hemingway. Instead, after a short stint working full time in a grocery store, I went to college in the middle of the corn fields of Indiana.

I thought that I would marry my college boyfriend and we would settle in Chicago. The city seemed larger than life to me, sticky, with hard edges. Chicago wasn’t my kind of town, but I was in love for the first time. I would have followed that love anywhere, long after he broke my heart.  

Instead, I moved back to Spokane once more. I worked at a local winery high on a hill, and at nearly every library in the county. I covered restaurants and chefs for a local magazine. I made friends and ran into people I’d known longer than a decade at the grocery store. I began to move through the city like an adult, finding my way through familiar pathways of my youth.  

From time to time, I would chat with my therapist about moving to a bigger city, hoping it might increase my chances of meeting someone I’d like to date. Twice, I contemplated moving to Portland, both times for a boy.

The second time, I almost succeeded. I had a job and a house secured. In the days and weeks before I was meant to go, I found myself craving a chicken chipotle sandwich from Rockwood Bakery, a coffee shop where my brother used to work, and a place I’ve never been to without running into someone I know. I bought one and cried as I ate it on my porch, thinking about what a long drive it might be the next time I had a craving. I wanted to buy several of their quiches and freeze them so that I could warm one up when I needed to taste home.

IMG_3586I worked toward overcoming my fear of parallel parking so that I could wander downtown. I wanted to lay eyes on places I hadn’t been for a while. I wanted to fix them firmly into my memory so that I could carry them with me when I left.

Friends hosted their annual garden party in their backyard while the chickens were shut up tightly so they didn’t mingle with the guests. I held two brand new babies, one of them for hours, even though my arms ached. I knew that even if I came home once a month as I’d planned, to write my food articles, she would still be much older the next time I saw her. I squeezed just a little tighter.

That same baby fell asleep on my shoulder at brunch next to a sunlit window the week before I was supposed to move. My anxiety was speaking to me that day, throwing everything into sharp relief. I held that baby close, not wanting to let go even as we stood next to her ready carseat. My friend kissed my cheek and hugged me tightly, tearful, her daughter squashed between us.

Maybe it’s always hard to move, even when you are doing the right thing, but in those days and moments, I wondered.

I had only to throw my clothes in the car when the relationship slipped through my fingers, leaving me to decide whether I would stay or go. After a dark, sleepless night, I wrote two emails and a text. I cancelled my move.

Not everyone understood my decision. I can’t tell you how many people asked me why I hadn’t gone through with my big adventure. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that moving wasn’t the adventure at all. Falling in love has always been where I get my thrills.

Almost moving was a strange experience.

It was several weeks after the aborted move when I told my therapist I wanted to stay in Spokane. “I’ve been afraid,” I told her. “I’ve been afraid to love this place because I thought it was a good place to grow up, to raise a family, but not to meet someone I might love.” She nodded, because we’d had this conversation many times. “I don’t want to be afraid anymore. I want to dig my feet in like roots.” Finally, I unclenched my hands and let Portland fall. Spokane reached for my hands and held them warmly.

A few weeks ago, I witnessed a historic event in Spokane. Our mayor was reelected for the first time in 42 years. He’s a friend of mine, and I love the look on people’s faces when I walk right up to him and give him a hug in social settings. He has a tagline: “This is my town.” I found myself whispering those words at the election party as I raised a glass of red in celebration.

Even now they wander through my head as I drive to the bank or the grocery store, or take an evening walk along the ridge near my house at sunset.

This is my town, I think, and I mean every word.

cara YAH bio

Homecoming

Posted on by under Finding Place

The snapshot is of a girl in a gray Allegheny College hoodie, one she purchased in the campus bookstore on one of her pre-college visits. She is gazing at the camera, chin on fist, an open notebook on the table in front of her, a pen clutched between her fingers. She is not smiling.

The girl in the gray sweatshirt is me, more than three decades ago.

I look at the photo today, and I remember the melancholy and relief, the complicated emotions I experienced upon completing the first term of my first year of college. I remember that unmoored sensation, adrift between old and new and unknown.

*****

It was a few days before Thanksgiving, and I had a long six-week holiday vacation ahead of me before I would return for second term. I had survived my first round of final exams, and with that stress behind me, I was looking forward to seeing my mom and dad and two younger brothers, waiting for me in a house I’d never seen, on the other side of the state.

Just a month earlier, my family had relocated from a northwestern suburb of Pittsburgh to a northeastern suburb of Philadelphia.

When I chose to go to Allegheny, one of the selling points of this idyllic liberal arts college in western Pennsylvania was its proximity to home. I knew before Christmas of my senior year of high school that this is where I would go. I found out shortly after I graduated that, instead of a two-hour drive to visit my family, it would take eight hours door to door.

Now that finals were over, I felt homeless. The home of my high school years now belonged to another family, and the home I had known for the last ten weeks was a dorm room two hours north. When the photo was snapped, I was hanging out with my mom’s brother and his family for a few days. On Thanksgiving Day morning, we would all pile into Uncle John’s station wagon for the journey from one end of the scenic Pennsylvania turnpike to the other, where I would spend my long holiday break in a home I had yet to see.

When we arrived, I had to ask where to find the bathroom.

*****

I spent the first 18 years of my life getting used to new homes. Thanks to my father’s frequent corporate job transfers, I had never lived any particular place for more than five years. Home was where the family was. I learned to make new friends and adjust to new situations. As long as I could count on going home—wherever that was—to be with my mom and dad and brothers, everything was okay.

Every time I reread my favorite Laura Ingalls Wilder book, These Happy Golden Years, I was thrilled by the romance of Laura finally marrying Almanzo. And I cried every time I read the last chapter, when Laura moved out of Ma and Pa’s house and into a home of her own.

*****

I cried when my mom and dad left me at college one sunny September afternoon a couple weeks shy of my eighteenth birthday. But my tears dried quickly as years of new-kid-in-school practice kicked in. I met the other young women in my residence hall. I participated in all the orientation week events. I found new friends with whom to eat and study and explore campus and the surrounding town. I met boys, and I enjoyed my first post-high school almost-requited crush.

And then came the casual invitation that would set the course for the rest of my life so far.

When a new friend, a senior named Karen, invited me to a Christian fellowship meeting, I said yes. Because, why not? I had been saying yes to everything, from fraternity parties to movie nights to spontaneous late-night pizza deliveries.

A life-long church-goer, I had been involved in my high school youth group, but I had given no thought one way or the other about whether I would continue to go to church as a college student. Bible studies and service projects and retreats had no place on my pre-college bucket list.

Who knew that this is where I would find my people—and my calling?

*****

What the girl in the gray sweatshirt did not know on that long ago Thanksgiving Eve could fill volumes.

She did not anticipate how her decision to attend a fellowship meeting would lead her to a deepening faith in God, and to a desire to invite others into that journey. She did not know how many of the new friends she had just wished a happy Thanksgiving would still be in her life three decades later, or what triumphs and heartaches they would experience together in the coming years.

She did not realize that her own experience of finding purpose and direction as a college student would become her purpose and direction going forward.

She may have sensed that the home she was about to visit that Thanksgiving would never really be hers. She certainly did not yet recognize that Home had found her.

*****

Amy bio YAH

Where Are You From?

Posted on by under Finding Place, Guest

“This is my sixth time at this conference. Why do I have the jitters?”

I fired a short, honest tweet into the digital atmosphere, took a deep breath, and stepped into the halls of a Disney World convention center I knew so well. I scanned the crowd, simultaneously hoping to spot a friendly face and remain invisible until I got my bearings. My name badge displays a new city, a new company, and, oddly, my old name: Jen Rose.

The last time I was here, I was telling my engagement story and showing off a ring to anyone who asked. Two years later, marriage has changed more than a few things, but my former last name remains. Now it’s a radio name, belonging to a character on this networking stage.

Once I settled into the energy of the conference, I felt more like my past self. I spent the weekend laughing at old jokes with friends I grew up with, meeting newcomers, and struggling to give a short answer to every stranger who asked, “So, where are you from?”

IMG_6982“Well, I’m from here, Orlando, originally. But now I live in Massachusetts.” And I wondered every single time if that’s the right answer, if there even is a right answer.

Where are you from? Is it really where you traveled from? Because I’m definitely not from New England. Or is it where you work and live now? Is it the airport I flew from, Providence, Rhode Island, another state entirely? Do I tell them where my employer is – a small and sort of new CHR station in Worcester – or that I work from my apartment in another city over an hour away? I used to tell people I was from Orlando, but I actually lived in a small town an hour away. So should I tell them I’m from Boston because it’s a major point of reference and the only city most people out of state know of? No, definitely not.

Having two homes is weird.

*  *  *  *  *

It’s been about a year and a half since I said “I do,” packed up whatever could fit in a suitcase or the trunk of my Honda Civic, and moved into a third floor apartment 1,200 miles away from everything I had known. And since the day I arrived I’ve been wrestling with ideas of home and finding my place. Friends and family ask if I’m feeling at home yet, and I say yes. It’s partially true. I can get around without a GPS most of the time, I have favorite coffee shops, and I can finally pronounce some complicated Massachusetts town names.

And yet, still the displacement. Still the realization that I can’t go back to the past. And sometimes, the nagging voice that says “You’re different. You’re not from here.”

In some ways, the voice is right. This will never quite be home. That isn’t resistance to change, or bitterness, or resignation. It’s truth. And it brings some comfort.

IMG_6905The biggest move of my husband’s life was from the house he grew up in to our current apartment, eight blocks down the road. He’s a New Englander through and through. The rhythm of the seasons, the cadence of the language, the pride in the land and its history are all a part of who he is, and loving him teaches me to love this place more. So in a way, with him, this is truly home.

As for me… well, I can’t turn back time and grow up here. I can’t transplant my family, can’t rewrite history so my New Englander grandfather never married an Alabama girl and worked out his days in the orange groves of Florida. I can’t, and I’d never want to. The rhythms, seasons, culture, and history of my homeland have shaped me into the person I am, and though I never fully appreciated it then, I do now, every time I catch a glimpse of palm trees outside an airplane window and relearn how to breathe the heavy tropical air.

And you know, that’s okay. Home can be in two places, even many places. Home is where we first spring from seeds, and it’s where we replant our roots. But we still reach for the sun, for something more, for the home still coming, someday.

*  *  *  *  *

 Jen Rose“Where Are You From?” was written by Jen Rose Yokel. Jen was born and raised in central Florida, but now lives in the strange land of southern New England. She’s a poet, a radio nerd, and a regular contributor to The Rabbit Room. When not writing, she enjoys frequenting coffee shops, hunting down used books and vinyl records, and exploring nature with her husband Chris. You can find her thoughts and poems at jenroseyokel.com and see pictures of mostly food and trees on her Instagram @jen_rose.

Finding Hope in the Depths of a Woodpile

Posted on by under Finding Place

After “The Move,” we found our way to a small doublewide trailer in the shallow hills of central Pennsylvania, only a few miles from where I had grown up. When we moved in, small patches of ice and snow still resided in the shadows. The forest that stretched up the hill away from the house was bone-bare and brown. The birds were just beginning to find their way through the thaw.

It was the opposite of the neighborhood we had left. It was not glitzy or fashionable. We were not surrounded by cars and people. When we drove down the gravel driveway, slowing for the deeper potholes, we were not in awe of the material success of those around us.IMG_0078

But it was beautiful. And peaceful. We found healing there on quiet afternoons as Maile made supper and the kids’ voices ricocheted back at us through the valley. Lines of geese stretched across the sky and slipped through the dusk, circling, then dropping into neighboring fields.

Everyone, everything, it seemed, was returning home.

* * * * *

The first spring there, we decided we were farmers. We planted a massive garden in the back yard, turning over the deep green grass, exposing rich, brown earth. Anything could grow in that soil. Even hope.

The second spring, having conquered the gardening aspect of life, we turned to raising chickens. We bought them at a local feed store and took them home in a cardboard box with perforated holes in it. So they could breathe. We promptly settled them in large plastic container in the kitchen, and, with the help of a heat lamp and a small feeding system, managed to get them alive through spring.

I don’t know exactly when it was that the chickens started laying eggs, but they did, and we enjoyed them. The kids brought back four brown eggs a day to the house, holding each like a small miracle. By the time fall arrived, they were free range chickens and we lost track of where they were laying their eggs.

We searched the bushes, the woods, the underside of our doublewide. No luck. Leaves blew in sporadic gusts down the hill. We wondered if they had stopped laying because of the cold. We wondered if animals were getting to the eggs before we could. We kept looking.

* * * * *

When we had to leave our home in Virginia, it felt like all the good things had gone missing. Our church, our friends, our future: all of it up and evaporated in the time it took to drive 200 miles north. And for a little while we stopped believing good things could last. We stopped looking for them.

A quick internet search had taken us to that doublewide. My father happened to know the owner. We didn’t recognize it at the time, but being able to move into that quiet space was the first hint of goodness returning.

* * * * *

One day my daughter Abra, three or four years old at the time, came running inside, shouting to anyone who would listen. She hopped up and down and in each of her hands she held an egg.

“Where did you find those?” I asked.IMG_0068

We followed her outside and through the yard to a woodpile the landlord had made from the branches of a fallen tree. Abra climbed back behind the wood and pointed.

There, in a small bowl-shaped space in the depths of the woodpile, lay at least two dozen eggs. It was cold, so they hadn’t gone bad. We used a tongs to reach in and take out each little miracle, one by one.

* * * * *

As the months passed, I found work. We settled into a routine and made new friends. We found a church to call home. The things we had lost in Virginia would not be replaced, but there were good things to be found, even in that new place.

It can sometimes be hard to believe there is still good in the world. It can be so hard to find, especially after The Move or The Diagnosis or The Divorce. But it’s still there. We might not be ready to discover it right away, but the world will thaw, and the good will appear in the most unlikely of places.

We only lived in the doublewide for two years. If you ask any of our children which of our many locations has been their favorite house, each one will tell you that one was it. It’s where we landed in our hurt. It’s where we healed as a family. It’s where we started to find goodness in what had at first seemed a terrible gift.

* * *

shawn bio YAH

Three Years as “Mom”

Posted on by under Finding Place

If you’ve never picked up your life and moved hundreds of miles away to a place where you know no one, I highly recommend it.

At 26, I was burnt-out on teaching after only three years, uncertain of what my future looked like, and my always-dreaming-of-new-places heart was ready to take a leap.  I got on the computer. After a few hours on google, I applied for three jobs, got an interview for one, and within a few months  had whittled the contents of my apartment down into what would fit into a small SUV– rented, one-way, from Atlanta to Chicago.

I moved into a 125 year old house that came with the job, a short walk from the shores of Lake Michigan.  Already living in the house were three other adults and eight teenagers. The easiest way to explain my new job is that I worked for a nonprofit boarding school. I was one of four “house moms” to a group of smart, dedicated, and brave young women who made the choice as 7th, 8th, or 9th graders to live mostly away from their families in order to make their education a priority.  In many ways, the people in that house lived as a family.

My favorite parts of the job were easily things like waking up  a little earlier on cold mornings so the kids had cups of tea or hot chocolate to take with them to the school. I would often stand just inside the front door and say good-bye, shivering against the cold Chicago wind, as they walked out the door with smiles on their faces and gloved-hands clutching mugs. The highlight of the day was almost always dinner. At least four nights a week we gathered around the extra long dining room table and there was a chorus of “please pass the . . .” as dinner plates were filled and then stories from the day began.

Our dining room table, set for a Christmas Party.

Our dining room table, set for a Christmas Party.

One late spring day one of “my” kids came home to say that she needed to take fruit to a school function the next week. The morning of the event I pulled out a fruit platter with oranges and kiwi and grapes and strawberries arranged in an alternating, symmetrical color pattern. She looked at the tray and then back at me and said, “Did you buy this?”

“No. I made it last night.”

“Wow. It’s so pretty! Thank you!”

When I was a kid, the thing that I most wanted was to be a mom. There were a few years in college where my life seemed to  moving towards my dream of  “get married young and start a family.” While that didn’t happen, my desire to be a mom remained. But there, with fruit tray in hand, I realized something.  It was a simple moment in the midst of a life that included dishes and laundry and “turn down that music” and checking on homework and a million things that were very mom-like, but it was that moment when I knew that I had found my place. Somehow, my always-wanted-to-be-a-mom heart was getting to live its dreams.

At the beginning of November I was back in Chicago for a few short days as part of a work trip. I drove past the old house and paused for just a few moments, giving thanks for what I learned those three years and have continued to live out since: I am a person who wants to make spaces safe and welcoming. That is a passion and a desire that can be lived out no matter if anyone calls me “mom” or not.

***

Nicole bio YAH

A room of my own

Posted on by under Creating Place, Guest

Even before we were married, Ben and I enjoyed dreaming together about where we might live someday. Sometimes we explored the possibilities of different geographical locations, but more often we discussed the details of our future house. While we plotted ideal but realistic spaces for each of Ben’s many creative interests, I struggled to know what I would do in a room of my own.

I was a very imaginative child, but even from a young age I set impossible standards for the things I created. As I grew older, I took classes to teach me the “correct” way to create. I enjoyed art, writing, and music, but there was always someone better than me. I grew weary of feeling like a mediocre imitation of someone else.

After college, life was filled with expectations to meet—job interviews, performance reviews, housework, bills. I wanted something that was mine, with no one telling me what to do or how to do it. I didn’t fully realize it at the time, but as I struggled to find where I fit in the adult world, I needed a place where I felt free to experiment, make mistakes, and try again.

Simply the act of verbally setting aside space for me to create, even before Ben and I had the means to make it a physical reality, was powerful. The point wasn’t to be fair, making sure each of us occupied an equal allotment of square footage. Instead, it was about recognizing me as a creative being. We were investing in who I was and what I could create, without guaranteed results. My room was a gift of possibility, not something I had to earn. I was entrusted with resources before proving I would use them wisely and well.

Knowing I had space with no strings attached gave me permission to take my time and explore. I didn’t have to try to measure up to anyone else’s standards. I could rediscover my creativity my own way. Setting aside physical space to create gave me the internal space to start believing in my creativity again.

00030In our 525 square foot newlywed apartment, we carved out slivers of creative space. Our bedroom was small, but it became more than a place for our bed and our clothes. Amidst Ben’s drawing easel, computers, and musical instruments, I found room for a sewing machine I purchased from a thrift store. Choosing a less common pastime relieved some of the pressure to perform, and, as a tall woman generally unimpressed with fashion trends, the possibility of making my own clothes appealed to me.

A heather gray pencil skirt was one of the first projects I tackled. I even sewed a back vent instead of just a slit, not realizing it was a more advanced option. I just preferred the way it looked. I didn’t have any sewing patterns and didn’t know how to use them anyway—I made things up as I went, cutting into a 25-cent piece of clearance fabric after examining a skirt I already owned. The resulting skirt isn’t fit to be worn in public—the seams are unfinished, the hem is crooked, and the zipper insertion is appalling—but it still makes me immensely proud.

When the time came to move from our first apartment into our first house, we only looked at homes with at least three bedrooms. Of course we needed somewhere to sleep, but we also wanted to finally each have a room of our own. The house we purchased was old and the bedrooms were small, but they were ours to arrange and use however we wanted—places to experiment freely without worrying about the mess. After the crowded drabness of our apartment, our house was full of character. Built in 1926 in a logging town, it had beautiful birdseye maple floors and decorative molding above the doors and windows. I painted the walls of my room a soothing mid-tone blue and furnished it with dumpster dives, free finds from Craigslist, and anything that made me smile.

It was hard to leave my room behind when we moved to a new city, but I still have a room of my own. For now we’re renting and I’m not allowed to paint the dingy white walls. Bits of thread and fabric beneath my sewing table tangle in the utilitarian brown carpet. But when I feed the coral colored satin and lace of the bridesmaids dresses I’m making for my sister’s wedding under the presser foot of my thrift store sewing machine, I feel completely at home.

*    *    *    *    *

JohannaSchram“A Room of My Own” is by Johanna Schram. Johanna feels most comfortable in places that are cozy and most alive in places that are spacious. Though the city changes, Wisconsin has always been the state she calls home. Johanna is learning to value wrestling with the questions over having all the answers. She craves community and believes in the connecting power of story. Johanna writes at her blog joRuth to help others know themselves and find freedom from the “shoulds” keeping them from a joyful, fulfilling life. She can be found on Twitter @joRuthS.

Apartment Story

Posted on by under Uncategorized

apt story

At this writing, I’ve spent the past month moving the last four years of our trio’s belongings out of an unremarkable two bedroom apartment in midtown Anchorage. It’s possible I consumed my weight in ibuprofen during this undertaking. Throughout the endeavor, I also found enough Legos embedded in the carpet fibers to assemble a small, albeit misshapen army.

While I’ve known for some time that I wanted to move from this space, I never could have prepared for the emotional rollercoaster of actually doing so. Packing and cleaning our apartment made my July feel like an unending series of montage scenes. In many ways, my month resembled one of those corny “flashback” episodes of the sitcoms of my youth, like Family Ties or Growing Pains:

IMG_8987

– photo, Brian Adams, 2013

This is the spot in the kitchen where we processed and cooked our first wild-caught salmon.

Here’s the place in the bedroom where our youngest, Matt, was born.

This is where I would put Sam down for a nap when I was in grad school.

And here’s the place – during the period that Sam wanted his mattress in the closet, the year his brother and mom lived in Pennsylvania – that we read The Hobbit together…

matt laff

*

Many writers – well, at least Burt Bacharach and Edie Brickell – have rightfully speculated that “a house is not a home.” We’ve all likely stepped into or dined at a location that at first glance seemed an enviable living space that instead revealed or possessed an unsettling feeling in the air: The spirit of “home” that we expect to inhabit a property can prove noticeably missing from a “house” structure. Still, I’ve visited many more impressive living spaces than ours in recent years, and frequently returned to our apartment – with its 1970’s, bright-orange countertops and carpet the color of a three day old March snow – lamenting that circumstances didn’t afford us a larger, more stylish space to dwell in together.

*

I once heard a bit of “literary lore” that’s over the years helped me work with, among other things, “writer’s block.” As best as I recall, the tale goes that Chekov – the Russian short story wizard and playwright – was seated at a table outside a cafe where a fellow writer lamented the difficulties of the writing task. In response to his friend’s grousing, Chekov lifted or pointed to a glass on the table and – I’m paraphrasing – remarked, “Look! This glass! Start with this glass. I could start writing about this glass and soon a story will emerge!”IMG_6609

If it’s true that each person invents, or at least significantly participates in shaping his or her reality, then Chekov makes a wonderful point. The materials for creating good writing and art, and, more importantly, a life are everywhere around us.

In other words, the tools for crafting the stories (and poems and songs) of our lives are always within view – in every direction we turn or look – provided we learn to cultivate an awareness of them, and then use them to pay tribute to the life we’re given.

“Every day is a god,” charges Annie Dillard, “Each day is a god. And holiness holds forth in time.” If this day is a god, too, then how have I recognized it for what it is, whether I live in a majestically-caffeinated, superbly-microbrewed, literary and artful progressive hub like Portlandia or Brooklyn; or in a gruff, misplaced neighborhood pitched between two thoroughfares amidst a gaudy cluster of stripmalls in Anchorage, Alaska? If Annie’s right, the divine runs amok in every place I find myself, and I’d be remiss to prove too stymied or checked out to engage with it somehow.

Or, as Mary Oliver intones:

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you…

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The daily task, it seems, for my small part in life’s continuing unfolding, is to ask if I am even listening in the first place? Am I curiously taking notes or am I continuing to uneasily recite the redundant, recurring melodrama of Me?

Rather, if the world is offering itself to my imagination, calling to me, perhaps it’s only common courtesy to pick up, to answer the call in the first place? No matter where I am?

*

By the end of July, in a space I had for months, even years, known it was time to leave, I was surprised and overwhelmed by the emotions accompanying the move, solely given the import of our collected memories and experiences under our little section of the building’s roof. Though our apartment was never the envy of others, our little brood managed to – with attention and care – create a place together. Not a perfect place – not by a longshot. In fact, at times, it was a deeply troubled and fraught place. (The middle of its story, after all, features a divorce.) But we abided there in the best ways we knew how, and in our abiding, this place became home.

apt br

*

…Here is the spot where I feverishly added to a list of “Reasons to Stay Alive” in 2013…

…This is the room where the songs “Olena,” “Book of Consolation” and “Hope, Alaska” came to life…

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…Here’s where, in 2008, I watched an episode of Planet Earth on DVD, as I gently rocked back and forth in the living room with Matt, then only a few weeks old.

David Attenborough detailed the journey of newly-hatched sea turtles. The mother that the baby turtles never meet laid and buried her eggs in the sand, and then returned to the sea from where she came. In this scene, the newly-hatched babies clamored, scampered towards the roaring ocean, drawn there by some invisible, timeless knowing.

This is the spot where the film showed the baby turtles darting across the beach and flinging themselves at the surging depths.

This is where I was sitting alone with Matt in the dark when David Attenborough noted that only one in ten thousand of the baby turtles survives their journey,

where I was then unexpectedly overcome with tears.

This is where I looked down at Matt sleeping in my arms, and rocked a little harder and swallowed the sea…

One in 10,000.

One in

One in 10,000?

 

We can do this.

 

(Right? Maybe?

Do we have a choice?)

 

We’ll do

– we will –

everything

anything

apt turtle

 

That’s Where I Lived

Posted on by under Guest, Memory & Place

“It’s that one, right there,” I tell my husband Ian as the car slows down and we peer out the window. “That’s where I lived.” I moved back to my old town nearly ten years ago, so I’ve seen my childhood house as an adult. But every time it’s still jarring. It feels like when I run into someone I used to babysit and they’re now in high school and my brain sort of cramps up like it can’t begin to process that they’re no longer five-years-old and just learning to read. It’s the same with my old neighborhood; it’s aged, too.

Several of the small two-story houses on the block, originally built by the railway, have been painted and none of the neighbors standing in their yards are the same. Some have moved but the elderly woman who lived to the right of my childhood house passed away about 15 years ago. Looking at her house flashes me back to her funeral service. But I quickly yank my train of thought in the direction of happier recollections: her short white hair and friendly smile, and how her house always smelled like old person soap — the kind that sits in a fancy dish in the bathroom and is shaped like shells and starfish. I find myself wishing we hadn’t run through her garden so much. And I wonder if whoever lives there now loves her forest of rhododendrons as much as she did.

That's Where I LivedMy old house is a small, white two-story home shaped like a square with its front door smack-dab in the middle and a pane window on each side that gives the impression of eyes, and a triangle roof perched on top. This is what all the houses on the block look like, although they come in a variety of colors. This is how children often draw houses, and I felt proud because it was how my house actually looked. It was as if this meant my house had achieved some high level of aesthetic perfection.

My mom’s green bird feeder is no longer hanging from the tree and the yard feels incomplete without it. I remember how the bird feeder would routinely spill seed all over the yard, which I’d incorporate into games with my toys. Usually it was food for stuffed animals, but one time I tried to eat a piece, myself; I discovered it wasn’t nearly as tasty as a bag of sunflower seeds. A pig my neighbors were babysitting, however, felt differently about the uncooked seeds. They brought the potbellied pig down so that we could take turns walking it on its leash. And the pig, to our delight and amusement, sucked up those pieces of bird seed just like a vacuum.

The front is no longer a lively brick red and is instead sporting a new coat of boring old grownup-grey paint. For anyone else driving by it’d be just a small porch, just like any other small front porch on the street. But I know that in a past life it was a clubhouse, a detective agency, a shelter during extreme — and extremely unrealistic — natural disasters, and a queen’s throne when my bossy best friend got to pick the game and wanted to spend the afternoon sitting smugly on the steps of my house as she ordered us around. It was also where I’d stand as I screamed at my best friend when we fought: “We’re not friends anymore! I’m never going to play with you again! Never ever!” After melodramatically slamming the front door behind me, I’d be greeted by my mother with that you-just-disturbed-the-entire-neighborhood-and-I’m-not-happy-about-it look that I was a little too familiar with.

The patch of grass in the front yard looks so tiny now, but I had the biggest front yard out of all my neighborhood friends. This meant all the good games took place in my front yard. During the summer we’d sometimes flip our bicycles upside down and place them in a circle and pretend it was a fort. During the winter, when it finally snowed, we’d attempt making the snow equivalency of our bicycle fort. But because we were in the Seattle area our winters weren’t very snowy, so by the time we’d built a snow-wall we would’ve used up all the snow in my front yard. We’d have half a fort, a wall we were proud of, but the snow would be gone, the grass would be showing. And there was nothing left to have a snowball fight with. There was never enough snow, I think.

“Well, this is where I grew up,” I tell Ian with a shrug as the car stops for just a moment so we can look. I can’t explain how much it’s changed, and I don’t try. It feels smaller now, duller. It’s as if that wild, vibrant childhood magic faded and left an ordinary, run-of-the-mill neighborhood standing in its place. “It’s changed a lot since when I was a kid,” I say. It’s no longer the same neighborhood or the same house. But perhaps the biggest change is that I’m not the same little girl running barefoot in my front yard. That little girl, like the neighborhood she once loved, now only exists in memories.

*****

Kelsey Munger“That’s Where I Lived” was written by Kelsey L. Munger. Kelsey is a sixth generation Pacific Northwest native. Aside from three and a half months spent living in a very tiny town in Hungary among the sunflower fields, she has always lived in or just outside beautiful, rainy (sometimes a little moldy) Seattle, WA. Kelsey blogs at KelseyMunger.com and can be found on Twitter at @KelseyLMunger.