HOUSE

Shipping Container Apartments

The meaning of house was something I understood.  After that, I struggled with its meaning.  Today I feel an abundant understanding of the meaning of house that is intensely personal and gratifying.  It is true for me that my house is the center of my universe, and I can have it and put it and be in it anywhere on the planet.  Becoming a widow gave that to me.

This, from John Berger, poet, essayist, novelist and screenwriter:  In traditional societies, everything that made sense of the world was real; the surrounding chaos existed and was threatening because it was unreal.  The house one lived in was built in the very center of where a vertical line crossed with a horizontal line.  The horizontal line represented the traffic of the world.  The vertical represented both gods in the sky and the underworld, the dead.  One's house was the exact location of the real and the spiritual. 

Repurposed Silo

I believe in this picture, although intellectually I know that the chaos of the world is real.  I can live in my house, though, and decide what to let in.  I can safely stow my stuff in my house, I can guard against disease, I can set it up against injury.  I'm a tangle foot, so that last item is a vigil.

I grew up in mid century, and learned from my culture to believe in the materialization of the house. I decorated my house and carried on inside in a way that made it a home for me, Ted and the kids.  We all had a lot of fun, such as the time I found out beautiful cotton flat sheets can be used for wall coverings, costumes and all manner of art.  Ted and I also endeavored to pick our house right, pay the mortgage, to some day have a nest egg for us and our descendants. 

That typical, American, hearth and home vision and investment house and home went up in flames for me and Ted a couple of times.  Recessions, real estate busts, job loss, career choices chipped away at the materialization and monetary value of the home for us and millions of Americans, starting in the late eighties and nineties, continuing to present moment.  In our case, we lost gobs of money selling two of our houses, net zeroed on some and gained a little once.  From those experiences, I ceased to view my home as an investment.  As a result, I became purely emotionally attached to my house, my home, my center of the universe.  That worked better for me, and for Ted.  We were happy homebodies sans investment jitters.  We started using the entire color wheel on our walls, for our own delight.

Inspiring backstory: read Interstellar Orchard Blog

Becoming a widow unmoored me in various ways, including a re-evaluation of this emotional attachment to my house, my home.  After five years of living alone in a house that was both too big and too distant from my family, I finally let it all go.  Stuff, money, property, rural privacy and quiet, significant emotional attachment -- I let it all go.  Becoming a widow opened my mind to the possibility that I can decide what I need today, find it and acquire it, become attached to the fun of it -- and still keep my eye on other possibilities.  I live in a small house of 920 square feet in an urban neighborhood.  I rattle around there, too.  I own a tiny teardrop camper and travel with it.  Both are my houses, at the moment.

People today live in silos, churches, apartments, old grocery stores, tree houses, RVs, cottages, tiny houses, McMansions, shipping crates.  I am drawn to alternative housing.  I am drawn to neighborhoods, both gleaming and seedy.  My material investment cozy family home paradigm has shifted and now has more fluidity and changeability and I find more beauty there than ever before. 

Tiny house, Big social movement

It is solo I who is at the very center of where a vertical line crosses with a horizontal line.  The horizontal line represents the traffic of the world.  The vertical represents both gods in the sky and the underworld, the dead.  Whatever and wherever my house, it is the location of the real and the spiritual because I am there, not just the house.  Knowing myself comes first -- what I love, need, want, don't want.  Everything else -- including the chaos of the world -- may be real, but it's real out there, not here in my house.  I don't need to obsess about the future if I am satisfied with where my center is today.  If I need to move from my house, I know how to do that.  And it is alluring and liberating to know that I can live just as fully in a storage container or a tree house or a mansion (if I trip into the Lotto), or 920 square feet in Edmonds, Washington.  I still have an eye for beautiful flat all cotton sheets wherever I make my house.

I know first hand that the loss of home, of belongings, of real property is a devastating blow to a widow.  It can also be part of a new beginning and a freedom that can change and grow with us.  It doesn't happen overnight, but it can happen.

Understanding what house means to me is a gift that widowhood gave me.  And because I live at the center of the universe, I am connected to the spirit realm where my loved ones tell me to enjoy it, and pass it on.

Never more at home than in a teardrop