My heart jumped

I was just nostalgicizing about my childhood, and decided to take a look at some real estate in Moscow, Idaho – the town I grew up in. Lo and behold, on the very first website I checked out, there was a listing for the first house my parents ever owned – the house they moved into right about this time of year exactly 38 years ago.

What a trip! My heart really did leap when I read the address. They're asking $145,000. That would hardly cover your down payment around here. There are photos with the listing that show the inside of the house – the shelves my parents built in the front hall, the kitchen window I remember standing on a chair to look out of, a weird shot of the corner of my parents' bedroom, showing some hollow-core sliding closet doors that have probably been there since we moved into it in 1968.

Man, I loved that house. I remember sitting on the front step – I have pictures of myself sitting on it with my brothers and sisters – but I remember sitting there alone very, very early in the morning – the sun is up by 4 a.m. there in the summer – sitting on the cool concrete step and watching this warm, dappling yellowy-green light sort of dancing and swaying through the trees across the street, like seaweed under water ... and taking deep fresh and very conscious breaths of this incredibly sweet smell of cut grass, or some kind of flowers ... It's a vivid memory, one of my very earliest memories.

I have such strong feelings about houses. I've been meaning to write something about the last house I lived in, which was occupied briefly by some young people who didn't really love it and then sat vacant for almost a year before its current tenants took it over to use as a storage facility for the antique shop they've opened in my old landlord's gallery. I went there a few months ago, when it was still empty, to see if I could scavange a few more plants – I knew they weren't going to be getting watered and was going insane thinking of them languishing there all alone and dying of thirst. I peeked in the windows while I was there and was extremely depressed to see the place looking so neglected. It was kind of a crumble-down cottage kind of place, even when I lived in it, but I did love it very much and still feel really sad when I think of it being used now to house broken old furniture, musty books and piles of chipped dishes cared for by and belonging to no one – as compared with the broken old tables, musty books and chipped dishes I filled it with, and repaired and dusted and washed so lovingly, when the house was mine. When I lived there the house was full of life and full of love, and I felt like the house knew how much I loved it.

I don't think I'll be going back there again. It breaks my heart just to think about it.

Sigh. Old houses. Yesterday I had another brief bonding moment with the house I'm living in now, Mr. A's house – my house? I don't know. Usually it feels like Mr. A's uncle's house that Mr. A now technically owns, which the rest of his family still feels they have some vague claim to and which I get to live in right now by the grace of this relationship, but which doesn't really belong to me and which I would lose in a second if anything ever happened to Mr. A. But we had his family over for an Independence Day barbecue, and in preparation we cleaned everything and Mr. A took down the sheet that serves as a curtain in the living room, and the blanket he hangs in the kitchen doorway to keep the living room from heating up so much during the day ... and we dusted and vacuumed and put a bunch of the clutter out of the way, and suddenly I was reminded of the potential this house has to be a really fabulous little place to live. A place I could love.

It makes me think I should be putting my energy into that, instead of into building a separate little playhouse that can be all mine, and only mine. Then again, part of the reason I've been so longing to build it is precisely because I don't feel much ownership of the house. Sometimes I think building the studio will bond me more to the whole place, and those feelings will then extend to the rest of the property as well. Sometimes I think it's just another way to avoid digging in and talking about some of the things I need to talk to Mr. A about. Probably both are true.

Anyway. I have issues about houses. Not in a bad way. To me, a house symbolizes everything about the way I want to feel in the world. Comfortable, beautiful, simple, safe – a place you can retreat to, or open up to loved ones, a place to nurture and nourish yourself and others, a place to feel proud of, at home in. I want to feel continuously more at home in the world. And make places where my friends can feel that way, too.

I've been thinking a lot lately too about body-as-house. As I was getting my bike out of the back of the truck this morning to ride to work I thought about the "nested-ness" of all these entities – garage housing truck, which transports bicycle, which transports body, which transports soul, mind, consciousness – whatever it is that makes me myself.

All the ways we find to move ourselves through the world.

And where we come to rest, when we need to be still for awhile.