home&hope

I’ve lost all sense of home. I’ve come to the realization that I find “home” in being able to control my life.

My family in Pennsylvania is entirely well and unwell at the same time, and there’s not a thing I can do from 3,000 miles away.

Not only can I not afford a plane ticket, but I apparently can’t afford to move to a new apartment. But I also cannot afford not to move, as our rent is about to skyrocket.

I’ve been diving through possibilities, and my hope has skyrocketed and plummeted about fifteen times just this week. Endless craigslist searching, phone calls, apartment visits. I cannot bring myself to pinch pennies for a 400 sq. ft. apartment. It’s just not worth it. Maybe I won’t be okay living alone, but I like to think that I would if I had just a little bit of space. I thought space was something people needed from each other—really, space is just something we need to feel comfort.

Growing up, Derek, Katlin, and I were obsessed with a computer game called the SIMS—a simulated life. We would build houses for these charaters that we created. We’d decorate with wallpaper and furniture, and then let them live out their lives in record time. They’d get jobs and sleep and talk in jibber-jabber. Building their homes was always my favorite part, but we could never make a complete home with the allotted beginning budget. We had to use a cheat to get more money to build what they needed (and then some). And when their houses were too small, they’d stand in the room with thought bubbles over their heads exclaiming “X#?!Y*%^” as they pulled at their heads and shook their fists in the air. A caption would appear saying “Your Sim is feeling cramped. She is unhappy because she doesn’t have enough space.”

I need space. I currently have to navigate around our couch to enter my matress on the floor from the top or bottom. There is no space. I sleep on a mattress on the floor. Our walls are coated with books—my nearest solace, yet my enemy because they take up even the illusion of space. And yet, I can’t bring myself to pick up a single one lately.

Sure, I shouldn’t complain. I’m twenty-two and have a load of opportunity unfolding. I have a mattress at least, even if it is on the floor. This is how twenty-two-year-olds are supposed to live. But I’ve never lived up to my age. I don’t know. I still make friends with thirty-somethings yet am continually the youngest—at work, at church, in my family.

I like to see it as progress—I’m doing something. I’m out here testing the waters. If life would have happened like it was supposed to, I’d really be in my last semester of college. Instead, I’m just a confused person searching for years that I cannot have.

I don’t want to be older. I don’t want to wish my life away. I just want to not have to hide my age. I want to not have to live like how people expect twenty-two-year-olds to live. I want a bed. I want space.

I think it’s the country coming out of me. I dream of water views just to feel like I’m not surrounded by steel. I dream of open lofts with natural light (a rarity here anyways, especially this time of year). When Pickle & I go for walks, we pass people in groves, always paired off. We watch groups party in their apartments or stumble across sidewalks with bottles in their hands and cigarettes between their fingers, laughing and talking about the next football game.

I don’t want to be them. I just don’t want to be this. I wantwantwant. Gross.

No one ever said anything would be easy. Ever. That’s so vague & cliché, but I’m learning it’s more true than I thought. Can I really be a city girl? I think I’m only pretending. I miss my car. I miss the road. I miss not caring if I had a bed or a couch. I’ve taken it all for granted.

I want to be grateful, but it’s hard when I realize that at 567 words (and counting) this blog post already has more words than I’ll ever see in square footage for the next few years.

I don’t want to settle, but I want to settle in. I don’t want to move every year, but the housing market here can’t keep up with itself, causing costs to rise and space to decrease, and there are so many people living on the streets, yet I can’t bring myself to settle for less. This is what I was afraid of when I moved to this city—I am becoming one of them, but something within me is fighting it. I’m glad for the fight, even though it hurts—I don’t want to be disappointed in my good fortune.

So how do I trust that this will all work out? That I won’t be one of those homeless street-sleepers in 30 days time? How do I care for a dog and myself and offer more than prayers for my blood back East? How do I care for the street-sleepers and do something more than just whine about my fortunate yet unsatisfying life?

I think about that a lot with Christianity. We are called to so much: to let go of things of this world and care for people. To love our brothers and give to them. But we are selfish; I am selfish. I want a nice home, a place to feel at home. I want to take care of myself first. Christianity just seems so extreme, and I think we are all failing because if we did it right, the way Jesus says to, we’d all be living on the street helping others along instead of freaking out about square footage and being simultaneaously in and out of the city.

So there is an internal battle going on. I’m not sure who’s winning. Frankly, I can’t bring myself to route for either side.

Tomorrow begins yet another day of endless searching. The apartment of my dreams, which I was set to view at 1:00 was rented out tonight at 8. I’m running out of options. I’m running out of steam, but I’ve never been one to settle. If I were, I wouldn’t be in Seattle; I wouldn’t be a college graduate; I wouldn’t be a seeking Christian; I wouldn’t be twenty-two, living on my own, and praying for the next road to be “right”.

I can’t decide if this experience is humbling, frustrating, or simply revealing my true selfishness. Probably the latter two. The thought of packing up my worldly possessoins again for my third move across town in a year and a half makes my stomach churn. The thought of home creates an unsettling tension between tall trees and tall buildings.

I need people. I’m a people-person, I admit. Yet I cannot bring myself to do this roommate thing again. I’ve been spoiled my whole life by fields, my own room, and a spacious home that my father built. People don’t live like that here—things are provided, not worked for. People seem entitled, not earning to deserve. Finding the old ways feels impossible, but it’s all I long for. Don’t give me your fancy brand-new buildings with a high price tag. Accept me as a transplant who knows what it’s like to hammer a nail into wood and feel accomplished, who is willing to put in the hours to gain the reward of creation, not a paycheck, who cares to the point of insanity, even if there is no resolve, who will not choose to become the typical Seattlelite. I’m a Seattlelite now for sure—I’ve got all the signs of it: a dog, urban life, working for a Redmond-born company—but I’m still a small “town” girl with a heart longing to earn what I get and aspiring to deserve it before I expect it. I realize that at twenty-two, with little life accomplishment, I currently deserve very little.

Maybe this all sounds pretentious. I’m not sure. All I know is that I believe in hard work, manual labor, and the fruits of living off the land, even if those aren’t entirely my way of life at present. Isn’t that how the American Dream got started to begin with? Freedom, independence, hope.

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. –Hebrews 11:1

Don’t squash my hope again, Seattle. Hope is strong and keeps coming back. I’ve got a lot of hope—in God, for my family, for the future, for happiness.

place: EastvWest

I hope that I never lose the wonder of place.

Going back to Pennsylvania was a great reminder of that. While I lived there, it was beautiful: the seasons, the rolling hills. When I moved to Seattle, particularly my current apartment, I was in shock: This is where we live! I would exclaim on a near-daily basis, amazed by the views, the water, the mountains—things we don’t quite have in Pennsylvania.

This morning, Pickle and I walked out to end of the walking bridge. Mount Rainier was glowing pink and yellow with the sun not yet peaked over the snow. We stood in awe for a moment, trying to take it in. Of course I wished I had my camera, but sometimes, I think not being able to visually document a moment adds just a tinge more appreciation.

This hasn’t quite been the experience of the West I’ve dreamt of my whole life. My ideal West was living in the desert as some hip artist, admiring the vast landscapes, being cool and charismatic in the sun. Instead, I find myself in the center of a city, bustling and busy, and certainly not charismatic. Or hip. I’m still the same uptight young person who wears the same jeans and shirt for three days in a row. Maybe there is something to that.

I like to pretend that I’m down-to-earth or that I have my priorities straight. I’m probably not and probably don’t.

I guess I just thought that the West would be vast and feel so open. Sure, I’ve had that experience driving up and down the state of California, but I somehow thought it would be my everyday.

The East was once described to me as “claustrophobic”. I could see it then; I lived there. You were always enclosed by hills and trees. But city buildings enclose you on a much closer and seemingly taller level. Everything is within walking or biking distance. Even work is only fifteen miles away. So going back to Pennsylvania felt like a return to the open spaces: fields, two lane highways that stretch forever, and naked trees that let you see right through their branches to the next horizon. Driving five miles is like walking one in the city.

So life in the West isn’t what I expected, mostly because I didn’t end up in the West I intended—I went North instead of South. My compass is a little off, and the topography is much changed, and now that we’re in winter, the sun brings more cold than warm.

But the awe is still there.

The strangest part about Pennsylvania, was looking at the horizon in a 360 and not seeing the mountains, the pointy, snowy ones that at first felt like a closed in box but now feel like the walls to my home.

I belong here

When I arrived in Pittsburgh, it felt foreign. Of course there was the same statue of Franco Harris and the pieced together dinosaur fossil, but when I had seen them before, I was always going somewhere. This time, I was coming back first.

I am always so inclined to say that I was going home, but that’s just not what it is anymore.

I’ve started getting used to saying “my parent’s house” or “the place I grew up” just to be clear that I don’t actually live there anymore. I need to get it straight in my head or else I end up spinning in a current of uncertainty: which life is the present?

When I arrived in Seattle, there weren’t any dinosaur bones to greet me. There wasn’t a soul in that airport that I knew, but somehow, they felt like my people. They get me. I’m home.

once you were not a people, but now you are God's people

Prologue

Welcome to my 100th blog post! Wow! This is exciting for a number of reasons: 1) it means that writing is happening; all is not lost, 2) it's a commemoration of some really awesome people, several of whom were ones who helped and inspired me to start, develop, and (finally) share this blog. I used to be afraid of writing, but I knew it was something I loved and had to do; I never imagined being blessed with boldness enough to share it with all of you.

1 Peter 2.9-10

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Tonight, I am so thankful for family. Family at Community—sharing what God has led us to in our lives and that we are all here, in Seattle, as a part of God’s plan, even through all of the storms in our lives. Family at our apartment—Pickle and me running into all of our friends in our building and talking out our weeks. Family from a distance—the people who have influenced me and guided me and loved me, blood-related or not.

Particularly though, Waynesburg is on my heart tonight. Not the Waynesburg where I went to school, but the Waynesburg where I learned to live afresh—the Waynesburg after graduation. These are the things I am thankful for and that I miss.

Was it really just last summer that I was there? That we were all there.

I remember “move-in” day, walking through the gate with my carry-on suitcase and unpacking in Merry’s room, sweet Merry who slept in her sister’s room so that I could have a bed upstairs with the family, as one of the family. We’d get up in the morning, and Kim and I would go around shutting the windows and turning off the fans to keep in the morning’s cool.

Walking down the creaky stairs (the best feature in any house, if you ask me), we’d meet in the kitchen for morning tea. I think you really know someone when you know how they like their tea. (Even more so when you know their favorite mug in your cupboard!) I loved that all throughout the day, we would put on the kettle and make tea for each other—morning to start the day, afternoon (if not wine), evening after the girls were in bed, as we unwound with laundry and Frasier.

It’s these simple routines that I hold dear, even though they weren’t even my own. And as my lovely friend Kim would call them, these rituals compose our lives. She wrote, “Ritual is different than routine. Routines are ways of doing things you fall into without thinking too much about them; they become rote, and often even tyrannical things that eventually disgust you. But to nurture Ritual requires careful forethought, an attention to space and time, and a tender attitude of love," and that has stuck with me. I love it. I go back to those words when I start falling into routine. (So pretend I said ritual to begin with, like Christopher McCandless quoting an author with which I am unfamiliar, “To call each thing by its right name.”)

So that summer, I adopted their rituals as they adopted me—they being all of Waynesburg that is sweet and kind and lives with that tender attitude of love.

I would walk to my wretched Chemistry class, late almost every day (as I was for my 8am class the previous fall: so worth it to have tea around the table to start the day), but with tea in-hand: armed. (Martin & Kim drink tea fresh off the kettle like it’s already cooled—something I still haven’t mastered; they’d be pouring seconds as I was still sipping the rim of a full cup—a sign that I have a lot of tea to drink to catch up!) So I’d take my cup to-go.

After class, I’d sometimes walk up to the library and visit with whoever was there, most often Noah or Jill or Pam—people whom (with the exception of Jill) I didn’t really know well until that summer. We’d talk about Noah’s book or Jill’s daughters or Pam’s peacocks—conversations that weaved warm summer days into a flipbook of tiny celebrations after (yet during) a period of trial and transition.

My first day after class (and many after), I came home to Martin & Kim in the garden. We did so much therapeutic weeding that I think I’m still gleaning peace out of the process of just ripping out weeds and laying down newspapers, building up sections of stone and brick. (You can piece together the symbolism for yourself.)

I miss meeting with Joonna for lunch, catching up on the what’s nexts and the uncertainty of the coming months and leaning on the support over the previous weeks.

Ahh and baking and cooking with Kim! We made a vegan chocolate cake for tea time with Joonna; we made pasta with fresh basil and oven-toasted bread for some dinners—herbs picked from right down the back patio.

My mother would tell you that I do not cook; I do not wash dishes, but I learned to love these things that summer, and I’ve realized that it’s something I missed out on growing up—I always saw it as a chore, something to be done, rather than an experience of friendship (wasn’t it just something my sister and I were supposed to fight over?).

One day, I got to drive with Sally & Kim to Mother Earth Farm at the top of the hill for the first time. We walked through the greenhouse, pointing out our favorites, selecting some for planting, some for porch décor. This place quickly went from unknown to sweet—I’d drop by on my way in or out of town to visit Rose.

Then there were evenings sitting in the yard with Ian and Julia, watching the fireflies over the hill sparkling in the dark like sun flickering on deep water. We’d talk about poetry and future schools and summer.

I’m not clearly articulating any of this, and as each instance pours in, it brings friends because that’s what this Waynesburg was—a nest of friendship.

Ice cream on the porch—Noah & Michelle’s, Sally & Kevin’s, Martin & Kim’s. Wine at the dinner table. Tea in the playroom/writing room/sun room. Tequila & egg-in-a-hole at the kitchen table. Cake & stories on the back patio. Walks everywhere with everyone. Family visits. The Trees of the Field will Clap their Hands. Prayers & piano-playing. Lunch at the arboretum. Visiting Jay & his family. The Mennonite church. Walks with Elesha’s dog. Dancing with the girls in the living room or catching lightning bugs (and Elspeth wanted to keep one and asked Papa what they eat so that she could take care of it) or pushing Bea on the swing or reading Strega Nona while we waited for noodle water to boil or going to the park to “play school” (we found a snake on the sidewalk) or walking to the honeysuckle bush to suck the nectar out of every bloom.

Was I really only there for two or three months?

So all of these things are flowing in and out of my mind as I rest 3,000 miles away, content on my mattress on the floor with my puppy sleeping beside me, a cool breeze through the window relieving this summer’s heat and StoryHill playing on-repeat, which is actually what brought all of this to mind in the first place.

I was listening to them and thought of that last Open Mic where Noah & Martin sang and played together and covered a StoryHill song, and the band stuck (though I can’t remember that particular song). I think that was the beginning of the Waynesburg I’ll remember, the Waynesburg I’ve shared just a slice of here.

It led me to think of the idea of breaking bread, the way that it ties us all together, sometimes with literal bread. Like sharing Chemistry-class raisin bread with Noah in the Writing Center, which led to a conversation that ended with a friend, my sister, and me staying at his brother’s house in New Jersey for a weekend. Like sharing loaves of banana bread for dessert, for breakfast, for afternoon snack in a red house with a family of five plus one. Like learning to eat and sleep and breathe again after the trying months of the initial storm and the aftershocks and the continued challenges and fears.

God brings us to these places, and we don’t know why or for what, but when we fully enjoy the people there, we learn to stop asking the questions we can’t answer (loving them [this may always be my favorite] like locked rooms, as Rilke writes), and we learn to live in the simplicity of rituals, of intentionality, of love.

Our church in downtown Seattle constantly reminds us that the church is a people and not a place. I am so grateful for the people of Waynesburg who lived this without saying it, so while I keep saying “Waynesburg” like it is a place, I really mean “the people whom I love who just happened to live/work/be in community there”. 

oneyearlater

It would rain today.

My roommate now has a boyfriend, so our Friday night movies are officially over as marked by today—rain. No good to do much outside as the first of fall’s gloom settles in: a teaser of what’s to come. I’m starting to understand Seattle’s seasons.

I tried to make plans but failed. Most of them in my head, making up reasons that people couldn’t come over or me just not wanting to go out. So I didn’t. Pickle and I stayed in.

“Standing on the fringes of life offers a unique perspective.”

Pickle & I, well, I watched The Perks of Being a Wallflower. There is a small list of reasons this movie ended up in my DVD player:

1. the book has been a favorite since middle school

2. the sound track is perfect

3. Emma Watson

4. it was on sale at Target

5.  it makes Pittsburgh real—it drives me right through the Fort Pitt tunnel: sense of home

Tomorrow, my parents will pack a big ol’ truck and come to Seattle. They are bringing the rest of my life out. The material things, anyways—the bookshelf my dad made many moons ago; the turtle house my dad and I made two years ago; my pet tortoise who lives in the turtle house, of course; a kiln by which I have yet to make new things; the books that have comforted me like a wool blanket—heavy and warm. They’re bringing all of it out here just for me. So many miles.

I can’t help but think that this is it—the one-year mark. Monday will make it official—August 5^th.  Remember how a year ago, I was climbing in the window of my wretched first place here? I'm only on my third apartment...My “plan” was to come here, get a degree, and leave to sunnier skies. Well, I got here, and that’s about as much of that list as I’ve accomplished. I have no intention of leaving anything soon.

Funny how determined we can be once our minds are made up. Like how it had to be that I would stay home with Derek. Like how I had to graduate early and move far away. Like how that far away had to be Seattle, not Arizona.

Lately, when I look at the Space Needle at night, wholly illuminated such that it glows more than the others buildings, I can only think it must be fake. It cannot really be there; I cannot really be here. How did I get here? How has a whole year passed already? I guess it’s really only like eleven months actually in Seattle if you count all of my road trips and escapes; nearly a whole month on the road, out of the city.

And here I am preparing to sell my car. No more open road. This country girl is ready for a new kind of adventure: full immersion in the city. We already live in Uptown, walking distance to all we need; bus to everything we don’t; bike to everything in-between. When I bought my car three years ago, I told myself that I would drive it until it died—it’s a ’99 Subaru and had 51,000 miles on it at the time. 40-some thousand miles later, it’s still running strong, but I just don’t need it.

That car carried me back and forth to Waynesburg for a whole semester. It lost a mirror parked out on the street there. It got its door jammed in the day of Derek’s funeral. It drifted through the winding hills of Kentucky and the unseen horizon of Texas and the brilliant New Mexican stars and back again. Then through the National Parks and Monuments on the drive West to Seattle. Then through snow storms and desert in the same trip to Phoenix and back.

Damn.

In the movie, they’re listening to “Heroes” by David Bowie and driving through the Fort Pitt tunnel, and they come out to the Pittsburgh skyline and the bridges and the signs. “Monroeville>>>>>” I think of the times I took that exit, the brilliance of the city that I didn’t see too often.

One morning in particular comes to mind. I dropped my parents off at the airport. It was two weeks before Derek died. I had just gotten back from Italy a week or two before. The world was new to me. Derek was going to get better. I was home again. We were going have a great semester together. This was how the world was always supposed to be.

It was four in the morning. The sky was pink with the strange light of dawn not yet peaked coming over Appalachia. The city was quiet, still. The freeway was a glorious open-air speed path before me, unlike the tight curves that led to the stuffy hospital every day.

My iPod was on shuffle. The windows were down. “On the Bus Mall” by the Decemberists came on, a song I had somehow never noticed.

“And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.”