Home is where...

I haven't lived in too many places. 

When I was small, I lived in a smallish house (that's not the right house, just the right street) in a suburb of Chicago. I remember it in broad strokes and events. Entry closet with a mirror where I made lifesavers spark. Living room where I damaged my upper lip. Dining room where I was told the birthday invitations had gone without stamps and no one would be coming to my party. Where my parents looked at me with worried faces as half my face swelled after an extremely unlucky bee sting.

Kitchen with gas stove -- we made omelets while tornadoes whistled through Chicago. My bedroom -- oddly I don't have many memories of it other than Sesame Street. Upstairs, my parents' room and the nursery. A basement: Dad's study with a computer and shelves and shelves of thick books. A stone floor on which my parents placed a bicycle for me to find.

The place I've called home for the longest period of my life (and many times still do) is on the north side of Madison. Suburban, larger and newer than the house in Oak Park, with a lawn and an attached garage, it was the American dream for my parents, and it is the place I identify most strongly with.

In college I lived in one dorm room for two years -- though shared with two different roommates. The first year was marked by tension and unease, the second I had more influence on the contents and presentation. I spent a summer subletting a basement room in a newish house which I never felt right about.

And then the Mills house. A year for personal growth and discovery, or something. A year in which friendships were strained and ruined over some of the smallest things I can imagine. A year in which I moved bedrooms, discovered my irrational fear of centipedes. I took our landlord to court, took out the trash, and took out my frustrations on some drumheads.

Mills came close to being a home, for awhile. It had the sort of space I needed. I contributed furniture and possessions to the common space. Second semester, my bedroom had enough room to walk around in (and I will always be appreciative to the roommate who agreed to switch with me). But it was always a battle. A battle against mold. A battle against bugs. A battle against roommates who had somehow changed from good friends into enemies.

The next year, I moved into a smaller apartment on Dayton Street. I had big dreams for Dayton. Here was an apartment with some CLASS. And here were some roommates I had known for years.

Did it turn out that way? Nope. The previous tenants ruined the place. The jacuzzi was broken and the landlord never fixed it. The centipedes returned in full force. And one roommate left and subletted his room. I holed up in my room, most of the time, going through the daily routine but just passing time while things happened around me and to me.

I think about all of this because right now, once again, many of my life's possessions are in boxes or scattered around floors and closets because I've just recently moved.

When I first came to Richmond, I was tired of the college life. For reasons which I'm sure I'll write about later, I felt that I had never really gotten the right stuff out of college and at that moment I wanted something completely different. Something new, something nice and clean and bug-free.

So I ended up in Wyndham -- a suburb of a suburb. The Maple Bluff of Richmond, except the shrink wrap was still on the mansions and the man-made pond struggled to maintain a water level.

Here, I thought, was something good. Here was a place with the space I needed. An attached garage. New appliances. No bugs. I checked each problem I had with previous apartments off in my mind (mold? sufficient outlets? a place to park? functioning plumbing? shower pressure?). On the surface, it reminded me of my parents' house in Madison, and I decided that's what I needed.

I was so very wrong. Yeah, the space was nice, but I couldn't use it to satisfaction -- any attempt to play drums would be quickly stopped by an angry mother with a crying infant. My neighbors were families and my neighborhood lacked soul.

It was sterile. And although it reminded me of my previous home, it was not home and couldn't serve as my home. It focused my mind on what I didn't have -- both in the present and in the past.

Even when I lived on Nova Way, my neighbors weren't my own age. There were a few kids a grade ahead of me and a few kids my sister's age, but no one my own age. With one parent commuting and another one stressed out at her status as practically a single mother, I spent most of my time alone reading books or teaching myself computing through play. It didn't help that the bee sting gave me a nice unhealthy phobia of the outdoors.

So when I found myself in a place that reminded me of that other home, spending my time in a similar fashion (reading books, screwing around on the computer, and generally being a hermit), I revolted.

It was a large internal struggle. Certainly I could come to some sort of compromise? This time I had friends in town whose couches I could crash on. It would be expensive to leave and take a long time.

But I knew what was coming at some level before too many weeks had passed; some boxes never got unpacked.

So now I'm here in the Fan. An old house, with bugs (though not centipedes, just roaches... much easier to exterminate) and drafts and random water damage and all of that shit.

But there are PEOPLE here. I can go walk outside and see people from all walks of life. My downstairs neighbors are in a similar place in life. Most of my friends from work live within 10 blocks. I can go out and drink without worrying about making it home.

It has its downsides, of course (what place that I've moved to hasn't had big problems I've discovered after moving in?). There are roaches -- hopefully my landlord will come through and they will be exterminated. My couch didn't fit in the apartment and had to be hastily sold to a friend (again, something I won't ever forget)

This place has potential. The kitchen is nice. There's room for my instruments. There's space in my bedroom to pace and think. The morning comes with full light in every room.  At this point, it's a case of committing. I have an opportunity to put some soul into this space -- not just make it a storage zone for all of my shit (which it is right now). 

In the past, I've measured my commitment to a place by the amount of work it would take to get all my possessions packed and removed to another location (I can do it in a day if I have help). Now, I want to measure it by the experiences I have as a resident here. I want to feel like this is home and that means I need to define it by the positive things that happen here.

(If anything, my parents' home was mine because of everything that transpired in the basement of that house, not the fact that it housed my bedroom)

I'm sure I'll move out of here at some point, whether to another place in the Fan, another neighborhood in Richmond or another city altogether. And at that point, I'll curse myself for spending time getting this place polished up and assembled properly. But right now I have the motivation to make this place mine.

I hope I can go through with it -- this is not a trivial task. I'm missing a couch right now, and refuse to get one until after the exterminators have done their thing. I can't cook too much yet. In two weeks I'm going back to Madison for two weeks, and I may find my honeymoon to this location has ended.

I've often said that your living space says a lot about you. How you clean, how you furnish, how you stock and store and organize. But there's more to the picture. Your living space says a lot to you as well. It's not a one-way street. It's a conversation, hopefully between friends. And that's why despite the roaches, despite the awkward laundry, despite the small refrigerator and old floors and slight water damage, I feel better here.