A nest of one's own
We did it!
A few years ago on an old blog, I wrote about how badly I longed to own a home. It was a real mind-body-soul type of longing. Before I deleted that blog I saved all my old posts and revisited that one earlier this week. It made me really emotional — because we finally did it! After literally years of searching and many, many, many failed bids, one finally stuck. The last month was a whirlwind as we sold a bunch of stuff, packed up our life in SLC, and hit the road.
I’m writing this now from a coffee shop in Bellingham, WA. It’s beautiful outside, a train just rumbled past, and you can smell the water in the air!!! God, how I missed that! People keep saying just wait until winter but they simply can’t be worse than Wisconsin winters. Gray and rainy? We can cope. Rainy means it’s not -30, my eyeballs and nose hairs aren’t freezing the second I step outside, and the air doesn’t feel violent. (But I’ll report back in a year.)
We got the keys last week but we’re still holed up in a bnb while we do a little pre-move in work. I haven’t been able to stop smiling all week. It’s tucked away in the trees and we’re surrounded by birds and frogs and deer. It’s 15 minutes from the ocean (I will be whale watching) and even fewer to a lake. We have enough space that I won’t be working from a desk pushed into the corner of our bedroom anymore and we’ll have room for visitors. It’s not perfect…but actually, yes it is, because it’s ours.
I thought I’d write an update to that old post but after rereading, I just want to repost it. This is literally a dream come true and I feel like that deserves some celebration.
I’m very much a homebody. Being at home, to me, feels like a big exhale. An unwinding. It’s the way it feels to take down a too-tight bun or peel off some too-tight spanx. If I was an animal, I would be something that burrows and makes its home out of a cool, dark space, and I wouldn’t leave that space for 6 months out of the year.
But as it happens, I don’t live in a hole in the ground. I have ~responsibilities~ that require leaving the house on a semi-regularly basis. Or…not house, because I live in an apartment and for the past 15 years, for one reason or another, I’ve moved to a different one almost every other year. The past few moves have really started to sting. As I get older, renting feels more and more like being a ghost in someone else’s place, and paying for the privilege. It becomes a game of making sure you leave no trace when it comes time to move out. It can get to feeling like a very small way to live.
My nesting heart longs for a house of my own. A place where I can paint the walls or hang pictures without thinking, I hope this doesn’t cost us the security deposit. A place where my basement isn’t full of other people’s abandoned shit. A place without upstairs or downstairs neighbors. A place that would drive me crazy with repairs and serve as an endless source of headaches, but my place.
I imagine a lush, fragrant garden instead of a lawn. I fantasize about a kitchen that was designed to actually be used, with counter space and outlets that make sense. I think about playing records at full volume and dancing around in the living room without worrying about thin walls and irritable neighbors. My inner meathead has a whole home-gym setup planned. In my wildest dreams we add a standalone unit above the garage so visitors have a private place to stay and I have a separate workspace the rest of the time. What I picture is not unlike a hobbit hole (though Ben might have his own ideas on where we’ll end up).
Anyway. As part of our move to Salt Lake City we did a major purge of all our things. I despise most parts of moving, but this part I actually love. Finally, a chance to get rid of all those things we moved from apartment to apartment but never used. I’m not a sentimental person, sometimes to my detriment, but it comes in handy here.
It feels good to get rid of things, especially once you’re in the swing of it. I feel like one of those tropical birds on Planet Earth, industriously clearing debris from my nest until the ambience is just so. And then you’re left with the things you decided to keep (for now). The apartment feels bigger and brighter, your closets and cabinets more spacious. Then roughly 24-36 months later you move again and it’s like, how the fuck do I have so much stuff?
One of my go-to meditations on anxious days is to visualize a room in my apartment full of boxes. I imagine the boxes hold all the noise, all the worry, all the mess I don’t want to deal with. With every box I haul out, I clear out more space to breathe. Eventually my little room is quiet and clean, I can get to the windows to let in some light and a fresh breeze. I sweep in big, forceful strokes and watch the dust swirl up and out the window. Or, if I’m in a more reclusive mood, I draw the curtains and lay on my back in the middle of the cool, dark, still room.
When I think about owning a home I think maybe it’ll be like finally scratching an itch I’ve had for over a decade. I’ll sink my roots and drink deep. I’ll tether myself to a specific place and time. I’ll shrug off the feeling of being a stranger, a transitory visitor, and get out from under the landlord’s disapproving eye. I’ll meet the neighbors, maybe even befriend a few. I’ll have more freedom to craft the life I want and invest my time, energy, love, and sweat into our home. And when we leave that house, we’ll leave clear traces of our life there. We were here.
A few years ago I was scrolling Twitter and came across this post of photos taken in an artist’s house showing small brass plaques screwed into the floor next to a deep gouge or on the wall next to cracked plaster. The plaques commemorate the damage. My heart swelled and I thought, I can’t wait to do this. I still think about it on a regular basis. I can’t wait to love my house and celebrate its imperfections as proof of life; let it tell the story of our time there after we’ve moved on.
I don’t really have any overarching thoughts to tie this together. I want a house, but can’t have a house. My nesting sensibilities will go unfulfilled for now. I know, ultimately, owning a house is not how you build a sense of home. But it helps. I guess I’m really saying that I want more money and privilege and security than I already have, who doesn’t? How do you get away from that desire when you live in America? Even though we all know by now that the American Dream was an empty promise, I can’t seem to let this part of it go.
So for now we’ll live in this apartment where we can’t paint the walls, where we keep all our pictures and artwork in the back of a closet because we’re not allowed to use nails or screws, where we have to water a dead lawn, where our downstairs neighbors make pot roast at 11pm and the vent blows right into our bedroom, where every item I purchase comes with the thought, do I really want to move this in 12 months?
But it’s also an apartment where we can watch the sunrise over the mountains every morning, with big windows and lots of light. We can walk to the grocery store and the library. It’s quiet and dark at night and our next door neighbors are kind. Whether we’re working, exercising, relaxing, eating, or sleeping, we spend most of our time in the same room. More space would be nice but one day I might miss this closeness. Our little family of 2 (plus Otis) fits here.
I used to dream about a life a lot like the one I have now. There will always be new, loftier goals. There will always be some unattainable thing that would make everything better. So maybe the big takeaway for me at this point in my life is to just put the idea of homeownership on ice and make the best of what I do have, which is a lot, and which I would be a total dummy to take for granted.
This week’s song on repeat
I see the music in your face
That your words cannot explain