Greener on the Other Side...

I am lucky. I am spoiled. I am blessed. It sounds ridiculous for a ‘glass-half-full’ kinda girl to have to remind herself of this, but I do when it comes to my home. We have a serious love/hate relationship.

By a bizarre twist of fate I ended up moving back into my childhood home as my parents vacated it. It was the perfect place for an only child with a vivid imagination to grow up. Trees galore, I developed this odd habit of climbing a tree to read a book. (Always the multitasker…) This habit was warned against after I fell out of the Aspen upon reaching a rather disturbing conclusion in an Agatha Christie novel. Mother ran out of the house with flour all over her dress, I was furious that the protagonist could be the murderer, and Dad told me that bruises were rather impressive but this didn’t mean I should search them out. There was a creek I could splash around in, animals I could tend to, swings to be swung, and flowers to pick. It was the kind of yard most parents dream of being able to provide for their children.

Now comes the hate. You just spent a week ripping off 60 years of wallpaper only to find that drywall was not in fact created when this home was built and thus you have scraped clear through to the beams. The toilet bubbles at an alarming rate when you take a shower. The electricity has to be rewired into the dining room- oh and by the way, your home isn’t grounded. There is an inch tall step into the kitchen that threatens you every time you want a snack. I swear this home is the one Dr. Seuss built.  On the bright side, when left to your own resources, one figures shit out. Bob Villa has nothing on me. I can rewire, refinish, re-plum, and redecorate anything you throw at me. The frustrating part though, is when you have a house and four buildings you are trying to keep from falling apart while working a full time job. Would you like some cheese with your wine? I can hear you saying. And yes. Yes I would. Preferably gouda.

Most people have 2 neighbors. I have over a hundred. Thanks to a densely packed subdivision and a developer that decided to have everyone’s back yard open up to mine, I have a consistent audience. I like to think I’m not that entertaining… but there was that one time when Erik got loose, and I was running around in a nightie and slippers. Thanks to one kind couple on their porch I was able to secure him after several yells of “LEFT! LEFT! He went behind the barn! Wait! No right! RIGHT! RIGHT! He’s by the creek!” And I am clumsy; I’ll give them that. More than once a fresh chicken egg has ended up on my shirt after unsuccessfully dodging a duck. I often wonder what they think… oh look at the horrendous condition of that barn, gah why can’t she fix her fence, why has the house been half painted for a year? Those chickens are SOOO annoying.

For someone who isn’t big on grudges, I have developed an immense dislike for that subdivision. Namely because people are idiots. Some guy was cross-country skiing through my back yard last winter. People walk their dogs on the property. Shoot randomly at buildings. Clearly I live on a public park.

So I have begun walking. I realize this seems to be a natural human phenomenon, but for me a walk was always a waste of exercise. I mean, why walk when you can run? Why walk when you can hike? It seemed silly. But the dog needs exercise, and on occasion I just don’t feel up to a run. And I rather like wandering without an aim. So where do I walk? On the 250 acres behind my house? Of course not. I walk in the subdivision, on the sidewalks, for one main reason: I like to creep. Now before you begin envisioning me crawling over backyard fences and letting myself into dining rooms (which frankly, almost sounds like something I would do), I mean the kind of creeping we all engage in. Don’t deny it. It’s the moment when you drive by a house with the lights on and try to peer through the windows. When someone leaves their private fence open and you peek to see what they have back there. My walks are an intense study of humanity. And admittedly, at times a judgment. I swear, if I ever have children that leave 18 neon Fisher-Price pieces of crap in my yard I will have the decency to live in a trailer court.

We usually take a random route that always leads to the back corner where someone is building a monster of a house. I keep thinking, why in the world would someone build that gorgeous house in this crappy neighborhood? Sometimes I fantasize about having a pigpen right on the other side of the fence just to piss them off, and giggle a little to myself. And then we move on and judge the people who failed to weed their flower gardens, whose children are screaming, or have tiny cages in their yards for their huge dogs.

On Monday’s walk we once again we ended at the construction site of the giant house. I stood and considered while Erik sniffed an incredibly interesting clover bush. I mean, why go to all that effort and money to live here? HERE of all places. And then I looked beyond the house. The sun was setting over the fields. My family’s fields. And it stuck me. Maybe they just want what I have. What I look at every day. Where I see a giant financial pit, things falling apart and to-do list, they see paradise. The funny part, the slightly pathetic part, is that I had to literally cross the fence to see how green it is on the other side. My family’s side. 

In this age where the media spotlights all the evil, all the problems, all the horrendous mistakes of society, it can be so easy to think that we have it so bad. To nitpick all the things that are making our lives difficult. When you’re upset, everyone is quick to tell you to get some perspective. And all you want to do is to tell them yours. I believe that perspective is often a physical act. Sometimes all it takes is removing yourself to see what wasn’t visible to you before. After all, it’s hard to see paradise when you’re standing in the middle of it.

Pigs however, would be quite fun.