Dinner Leftovers #3

A collection of stream-of-consciousness poetry, excerpts from unfinished drafts, & word vomit from years past

A STORY OF HOME

Originally Published December 2021

A Kitchen Range c.1984 Anthony John Plowden Eyton (b.1923)

~*~ Chapter One: This is a Relationship ~*~

Part of what I teach people is that they are in a relationship with their home. Just like any other intimate relationship, the way we feel about our home tends to be complex. When I look at my own relationship with my home, I am immediately aware of the intersecting life circumstances and inner processes that inform this bond. I feel gratitude mingled with frustration. I feel my own potential pushing against self-imposed and externally-imposed limitations. I watch my thoughts spin around all the ways I can work to improve the quality of this relationship, and feel my body burn with a desire for something better.

I live in a renovated 270 square foot RV with two children. This is not because I am cool and hip and traveling across the country on a grand adventure centered around re-evaluating my values or redefining my life in defiant opposition to the status quo (although I think it’s wonderful if people want to do that, this is not my dream). I live here full time in a long-term parking spot because I am poor, and there is nowhere else to live.

I ended up in this home when a coalescence of dumb luck, magic, and privilege allowed me to miraculously land on my feet after the effects of Covid, divorce, and the national affordable housing crisis resulted in losing my marriage and my rental house in one fell swoop. My husband moved out the very same day I learned we were losing our rental. Sometimes divine timing is so inconvenient it’s almost funny.

Where I live (a small, rural, mountain town full of second homes, Air BnBs, intergenerational land access, and vacation rentals), Covid flight compounded an already desperate housing issue to result in sky high prices and a rapid influx of newcomers with city wages, remote jobs, and a longing for a simpler life closer to the land. The thought of losing my beloved community–the only community my children had ever known–during a time when I had lost (what felt like) everything else, was completely devastating.

Still, I made my peace with the fact that we would be leaving the mountains where I had lived for 15 years, and moving to a town four hours away to occupy my parent’s basement apartment. I was well aware many people didn’t have that kind of safety net. It was a shocking amount of concurrent loss, but it would be okay.

Then a bunch of things happened at once. We received Covid stimulus checks, a not insignificant amount of backed child support (from my previous relationship) appeared in my bank account, and a small part of my grandmother’s inheritance found its way to me through my family. Suddenly, I had a pile of money. Not a dramatically life-changing pile of money, but enough money to throw at my problems and make some of them go away. Still, there simply weren’t any houses available, I didn’t qualify for a mortgage, and I didn’t want to take out a USDA loan with my soon-to-be-ex husband.

So I began selling all our belongings in preparation for the move and downsizing. I sold a woman a $10 sewing desk on Facebook marketplace.

And I left with an RV.

It was just one of those things where we got to talking. I told her all about my situation, and mentioned in passing that I was still hoping to find a tiny house for no more than $20,000. And she goes, “Oh! I am selling a tiny house for $20,000. Do you want it?”

Magic. Privilege. Luck.

To be honest, the language-ing and framing of manifestation doesn’t work for me. I know too much about socio-economic stratification, I am too well informed about toxic spirituality.

But after working with a talented somatic sex educator who also happened to be a witch, who gently taught me to drop my skepticism long enough to create my own life story–I totally manifested that shit. Also: white middle class grandma money. Ta da!

The RV was only partially renovated, but the former owner had done a beautiful job. There was a hand painted mural, solid wood cabinets, and a brand new washer and dryer. Just as swiftly as I found the RV, I found a long-term parking spot. And all of a sudden things were stable enough again that my grief had space to consume me.

~*~ Chapter Two: Everything is Available to Me ~*~

Homemaking became my spiritual practice because my life was very small, and I was very big. I was always enamored with domesticity. When I was a little girl I told my mother proudly, “I prefer to play inside games instead of outside games.” My friends would hire me to stage their Barbie houses, decorate their Sim interiors, and redesign their Minecraft cottages. I was obsessed with arranging doll furniture.

I did not aspire to be anything but a wife and mother, and this did not in any way contradict my early feminist sensibilities. “Being girly isn’t inferior!” I yelled from the rooftops. I proudly wore my pink silk nightgowns everywhere I went, I stole my mother’s forbidden romance novels, and I cut photographs out of Pottery Barn magazines to anchor my fantasy of my future suburban home.