Detour: The More Things Change, The More Things Change

There is a moment I remember from years ago. I was standing on Mount Washington in Pittsburgh, PA looking down at the city lights. I was with my boyfriend at the time; we'd been together a couple years or so. It was a beautiful night and we were having a great time. We were also in the process of breaking up, though neither of us was up to admitting it yet. I was about to move out of the city. I would come back to visit more than once, but by then our relationship would have dissolved. Some part of me knew in that moment all the things I couldn't articulate, things that were moving and changing, things that needed to move and change for growth to happen, things that I myself had a part in setting in motion.

I have been a renter all my life. Another goal in this move: buy a house.

I do not have a particularly good opinion of landlords. And if I reread that sentence I want to laugh out loud. Because the truth is, I am seriously convinced that they all go to Landlord School and take courses in how to be the biggest pricks they can possibly be.

This time, we'll only be screwed out of $250. My landlord decided that the backyard of the house we lived in is overgrown and we are responsible. Nevermind that he told me he would have a gardener come and cut it down after we moved out. (“Yes, but I never said at my expense.” Bastard. Bastard. Bastard. Bastard.) So he got an estimate and somebody, who's job I definitively need, told the fool that to trim back a pea-sized yard it would cost $350 – that's right ladies and gentlemen, my golden-hearted landlord is absorbing $100 of the cost – say it with me – Out. Of. His. Own. Pocket!

The fact that I will be charged for lack of gardening is so ironic, as to cause me to want to bite down on something like the stump of a giant petrified log and gnash my teeth for a good long time (but that would mean returning to Arizona, so nevermind).

“All I ask is that it needs to go back to the way it was. I'll send you pictures of what the backyard looked like when you moved in!” Mr. Landlord says to me. I don't give a flying fuck what it looked like when I moved in. And here, my friends, we enter the real conflict of thought.

He wants it the way it was. Hmm. Then I will have to try my darnedest to take the thriving passion flower vine climbing the trellis outside the living room window and return it to a struggling upstart. I will have to snap every bloom off the stupid-ass roses he left for us along the front yard wall. I will siphon all the homemade compost from the gopher-proofed garden beds we added and stamp out the wild flowers that moved in to the side yard.

We as humans have completely unreasonable expectations about returning things to the way they used to be. As if that is ever possible. Not to mention, we are also majorly conflicted about growing things. Look at the gardening section of your average store that carries any such items.

Fertilizer. Potting Soil. Round-up. Ceramic Pots. More Round-up. Seed Packets. Some product that means sure death to all bugs good or bad that enter here. Nurture/Kill. Nurture/Kill. We're lost. We're desperate for control. We will do anything to deny that in fact, things grow, and do not return to how they were. Sometimes that's pretty difficult to take in. Sometimes it makes a person a little edgy. Usually, we have no idea just when change begins or exactly how it sprouted. Usually, it takes us a very long time to catch up with the fact that it has happened at all.

We change things before we admit consciously what the full array of consequences to that change will be. Otherwise, we probably would never do it. My heart is still full of Monterey. There is nothing else yet to replace it with.

In an otherwise innocuous discussion about the microwave in the house we stayed in in Santa Fe, I proffer, “I guess we're used to the one we have at home.” A sentence that calls us all to stop short. We exchange shy, sad smiles. “I mean, in the old house,” I correct.

Isaac has been somewhat prone to meltdowns on this trip so far. Moreso than his usual pretty easy-going self. Chalk it up to less sleep, or lack of routine or major life upheavals. One morning, he had come down from his sleeping perch in the second floor pop-up portion of the van to have breakfast, which he wanted to have while curled up in the covers of our sleeping perch. Somewhere along the line, blankets became tangled in a way he disapproved of. Things devolved down a track that was both tragic and ridiculous, as many situations can become when you are six, until finally he was shoutinga bout the blankets, tears streaming, “I just want it back how it was! I want it to be how it was before!!”

And before I knew it, I was crying, too.

living in a van down by the river

It's not that I am dying to take on a mortgage. Debt is one of my biggest fears. Mike and I are different in this regard. Not that he is dying to take on a mortgage either, but one of his biggest fears is that the cat will get into the dryer and we won't know she's there before turning it on.

People, I have A LOT of fears, but cats and dryers don't make the list. Marriage is a balance of unbalanced minds. But let's get back to the subject at hand.

Mortgage – not high on my list of dreams. Painting my walls whatever freaking color I want – extremely high, we're talking throw your BFF on your shoulders and you still don't have to bend to walk under this limbo stick, baby.

A simple thing, I know. The two issues – (if you haven't been keeping up I mean mortages and paint colors) seem to be a package deal and I'm at the point where I am ready to dive in. It's kind of like when I chose to have a homebirth. I didn't so much choose to have my baby at home as I chose to have a midwife, and where I live the former comes with the latter. And voila! it all worked out perfectly.

I miss the old days; I won't lie. There was a time when Mike and I could look at a place and know we could make it work, that anyway, it was just temporary. There is something delicious about working with all the weirdness that is already there. But those days are over. I have the worst case of house envy possible.

When we moved to Monterey in 1998, housing was tight. We had no jobs, no cell phone and we were living at the campground. Not quite a van down by the river, but not your ideal candidates to take on a lease.

And when we got as far as the apartment tour, things got ugly fast. And I do mean ugly. I want to believe that now, over a decade later, things are different, but when we were looking at apartments around here in the late 90s, virtually every one boasted a carpet the color and pattern of which I can only refer to as “puke.” It was the standard Monterey carpet. How on earth, we reasoned, could such a beautiful place be overrun with such hideous carpet? I still can't answer that, but let me just tell you that at a particularly low point in our search we nearly took one of the Monterey puke carpet apartments and as an added bonus it was located on a street by the name of “Dickman.” That would have clinched it for me.

Street names are curious. Makes you wonder what kind of karma they bring with them. In dreaming about buying a house we have come across a few beauts for street names: Lovers' Lane. Bliss Street. These are places I'd happily take up residence – a far cry from Dickman.

Bliss and Lovers aside, by my calculations there are about half a dozen street names total in the country. Seriously. Count with me: There's Main Street. Maple. Elm. And at most three more. Center, for example? Do you have a Center Street? Ours is Central, but close enough. Towns right the hell next to each other use the same names of streets. The human imagination limitless? Yeah, check your maps.

By looking at the houses, at least in my neighborhood, you'd think we were a chummy species, all neighborly an' shit. Porches overlook the porches next door, bedroom windows sport views of their neighbors' newly-built decks. Of course there are a few things to tip you off that neighborly isn't quite the descriptor for life in 2010 USA: Maybe it's the No Trespassing signs. Maybe it's the yards where the most prominent thing planted is the car – on the grass smack in front of the door, if there is grass, because just as often there is concrete – lots and lots of concrete. I've long held to the belief that if someone has a house and can't see fit to at minimum *pretend* to be grateful for the privilege, they should lose it and that house should go to someone like ME. Fabric softener showing out the front bay window? Sorry. You lose. Dead Christmas tree laying in the front yard in April? Hand over the keys, buddy.

We have a nice place that we rent here. It's cute. A little island of sweet. But it's not mine, and I'm tired, so tired of my view of dumpsters and chain link fences. I want my own damn place and it ain't gonna have any bloody rose bushes, and it's gonna take more than four strides to cross, and every damn wall will be a different color. And if that means mortgage, bring it on. I'm a big girl now. I'm ready to face my fears.

There's a hole in my bucket, Dear Liza

Once, in a previous rental, we had to have some plumbing done. My landlady was a rather suspicious person. And a little crazy. She lived half a continent away from our place, thank god, but insisted we call her and have her on the phone while the work was being done. I dutifully phoned when the workman arrived. “Does he look smart?” she asked. I held the receiver away from my ear and folded my hand over my face, my head hung, then returned it to the crook of my neck. “Very,” I told her. Perhaps she thought I could peer into the bathroom and spot the hint of a diploma tucked into the crack above his jeans. Or maybe she kept one of those ancient metal instruments in the shed that measured the size of a skull. I had just never noticed it there next to our box of Halloween lights and my upstairs neighbor's hibachi.

There was no doubt she was a nut case, with more than a small margin of elitist thrown in. At least, that was my view at the time. Then today happened. And the washing machine repairman happened, who arrived an hour earlier than we'd agreed interrupting my jet-lagged son's attempt at a nap and stared into the tub of grey water standing in my washer to ask, “It won't drain?” and her question seemed pretty relevant.

I could surely win the crazy landlord contest. But this time, we lucked out. The couple that owns our house seem normal, pleasant even. We send each other Christmas cards. Things are good. So when Simon told me his buddy didn't have time to come until Monday, I was okay with that. And then when he told me, no, wait, he can make it after all, at 4:00, I said great.

I had just finished reading Isaac a nice relaxing tale of fast-running meat-eating dinosaurs, when the banging began. The religious peddlers have nothing on this guy – pounding on the door like the place was on fire. I could have easily ignored him. Denial is something we carefully cultivate in my family. But then Isaac got all whiny-ass on me, “Mama, I don't like that noise!” What noise? The sound of a forest of logs being repeatedly pummeled into the castle door? So I was forced to get up and let him in.

I showed him to the culprit in question and informed him I needed to return to my child. That's when he came out with his brilliant statement about the lack of drainage at which point I confirmed for him the issue and promptly closed him in the garage. He called me out again, twice. The first time to inform me that before he could do anything we'd have to get the water out and the second time to inform me that before he could do anything we'd have to get the water out. That second time would have been about when I stepped backwards in bare feet into a pile of fresh cat vomit. Nap was so far going well.

After we parted with the joy of knowing that Monday we'd see each other again, I miraculously managed to get Isaac to sleep with reassurances that on Monday he could watch the “worker guy” fix the bloody machine. Before drifting off, Isaac wanted to know how we'd get the water out. “With a bucket, (Dear Liza).” “Then we can water the plants with it!!” he announced. And I knew right away. I'm raising an optimist. He has his father to blame for this.

So there I was, wasting a perfectly good nap time scooping water into a bucket that, yes, had a hole in it as it turned out, and tossing it into the backyard which by now was decorated with my family's underwear since the wind had blown down the clothes hanger containing the load of laundry that had had the misfortune of getting stuck in the cycle that never ended. That never ended. Never ended. Never ended. Ended. Ended. Ended...

if I had a hammer

Barn's burnt down--
now
I can see the moon.
--Masahide

When we first moved to California, we got an apartment that was a good apartment, one that we felt lucky to have landed – both because of the housing crunch at the time and the fact that prior to that we were living in a tent. Should I have to mention we had no jobs? – and me, the about-to-be-grad-student, with no prospects for getting one.

We stayed in that apartment for 5 and a half years. Longer than I can remember staying anywhere for quite some time. At about the five-year mark, I got antsy. Maybe we should move. I was aided in my thought process by a rat-bastard property manager that was dumber than mud and with whom I had multiple heated arguments. Most of them involved some invasion of privacy and loss of garden. We were renters in a majority owner-occupied condo complex and enthusiastically ignored. I've written poems about this experience. They aren't pretty.

Mike wasn't so sure about the move. I couldn't explain in any real terms why (besides the manager) I wanted out. It just seemed like maybe it was time.

After getting really ripped one night at the bar around the corner and complaining loudly about each of our neighbors as I gripped Mike's arm while teetering along the path back to our place, we decided it might indeed be that time.

We found a new place and voila! the move was on. Two months later our new landlord called to say she wanted her house back. And so began our next 5 years – move after move after move. My friends hauled away furniture while I lay curled on whatever soft thing was left, queasy as all get out, 6 weeks pregnant. Then, for Isaac's first two birthdays we celebrated by moving. If we refer to something in the past or if we look at pictures, Isaac will ask whether it was in the old house, the old-old house, or the old-old -old house.

Nowadays, we talk about the possibility of having our very own house some day. Of buying one or building one. When I first brought up the concept of buying a house, Isaac went pensive for a long time, then came the questions: “How will we get it home? Will it fit in Auntie Bridgett's truck?” Since then, my boy has moved along with us in our dream. Sometimes he'll tell me about how when he gets bigger we'll have lots of trees in the yard. And lots of grass and lots of garden. He'll show me just how crazy he'll run around when we have all that space. He speculates on how many pomegranate trees we will have in the orchard.

Not one to dismiss his history, however, Isaac has also started to talk about the time when he can come back to this house, “when this house is old.” Despite the fact that we have many fond memories accumulating in our current locale, pretty much all of Isaac's conscious ones, and are about to celebrate – imagine – his third birthday in a row! in this same house, he, quite frankly, can't wait to knock it down.

Demolition as high on his list of interests as building, he describes to me in detail the demise of our hearth and home. The windows is his room are going first, or, some days, the front door. BAM! SMASH! Down it will come – WHAMMO! Crumbling into tiny pieces under his direction and ambitious agenda. And then this wall, and the bathroom that mama's always hated anyway – VROOM! CRUNCH! All of it razed. He'll be using his current tools – sturdy colorful plastic numbers our friends Barb and Chris got him when he turned one, plus the piece of oak branch he uses for a jackhammer.

When I first arrived in Hungary in 1994 to take a job teaching English in a secondary school, a woman who remains a friend to this day, Anna, toured me around the city. It was an odd kind of circuit. Every so often, she'd point and say something like, “See that spot over there? There, where there's nothing. That's where the Lenin statue was.” “There?” I'd try to confirm, never sure I had the right spot of nothing picked out, scanning the plaza or bus station or street corner. “Yes,” she'd say, “There. Just there. You see?” “Uh-huh,” I'd say, not wanting to be disagreeable.

While the metaphor doesn't carry over so smoothly – our house is not a Lenin statue, not a representation of oppression and loss, sometimes you have to get things out of the way to move forward. Even things that aren't obvious obstacles. I'll admit I've started to fantasize about when this house no longer stands – in the figurative sense – hoping (because we're allowed that emotion now) that this will be the last one we can't paint the walls of, the last one we look at on moving day and say, “Why wasn't it ever this clean when we lived here?” Maybe it's no Lenin, but it's one in a line of rentals, a line of not-ours. Maybe the last one.