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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.
