Peach House
defining home and trying to purchase one, too.
This week Tucker is in a songwriting workshop. When he edits this, he may make me remove this part because he is a private person who is doing something he’s always wanted to do, and that is a tender place to be for anyone. If he removes this, I’ll have to write a new intro, but if he doesn’t, I’d just like to add that in the almost 14 years of being together, I’ve never been prouder of him than I am right now in this moment. I feel like, after 14 years, we’re just now hitting our stride both individually and together. In many ways, you are and have always been my home. This week as we both make things around the subject, it feels imperative to say I am proud of you and I love you.
I digress.
In his songwriting class, his instructor, an inimitable musician that we both love and admire, tells him to write what he knows. Today, I’m just going to take that advice and go with it. I’m going to write about home, and in particular, the house we’ve lived in for the past two years.
My last home was full of a lot of grief. If you don’t know already, I had a dog who was large and aggressive. He was a rescue, and I loved him very, very much. I was the object of his aggression more often than not. Because of his behavior, we enrolled him in intense aggressive dog training, and I spent as much time as possible with him. And because I was afraid he’d hurt someone else, we spent much of our time in that house. He ended up attacking me in that house and being put down a short drive from that house; I grieved both his death and my own PTSD in that house forever afterward.
One of the things I know about home is that more often than not, it finds you.
When it was time to renew our lease, we opted not to. There was so much pain in that house, and our landlord was awful to us.
We searched for a place that felt like comfort and expected to search forever to find it. We looked at exactly one home.
When I walked up to the doorstep of the peach house that we reside in now, I knew immediately that I was home. There were three doormats at the front door, and one had an octopus on it. I joked to Stephanie, my best friend and our roommate, that this was it. We’d found it. I hadn’t even walked inside.
When I did walk inside, it was confirmed. Every room I walked into felt comfortable. I felt at ease during a period where that word meant nothing to me. I walked around, feeling elated and nervous. I wanted this house, but we’d only looked at one, and I was making this decision with two people. In my overwhelm, I went to look at the backyard and sunporch alone. I opened the door, and it was over. The backyard of our home, with its pond, expansive yard, the porch, and the fruit trees, was where I wanted to spend the next few years of my life. I knew it. Before I could catch my breath, tears welled up in my eyes. The door swung open, and everyone who was inside came outside. After a few minutes of no one wanting to say that they were in love, we all admitted that we wanted it. Our realtor reached out to the owners, submitted our application, and were approved within a few days.
The last blessing of all was the family that owned the house. We’d all been renting for years at this point, and we’d never had a genuinely kind and pleasant renting experience. We’re ideal tenants. We pay on time, we want to love the home we’re in, and we want to respect the property. We’d always been treated like party animals who were going to break down the walls and do crime. The people that own the peach house are incredible and gentle, and kind. They have been quick to fix anything, generous to us, and they have even sent us cards in the mail with treats like ice cream and apothecary goodies.
Even then, something inside me knew that I needed a place that I felt comfortable with because it would be where I would spend the pandemic. Or maybe I was just in such a low spot that I knew what I needed was to feel at home. Either way, I landed in a dream house.
From the moment I moved into this house, I was ruined as a renter forever.
This house made me understand the importance of being at home. For an entire year, I have cocooned here. I have wrapped myself in these blue-gray walls, and I’ve fallen asleep at night feeling snuggled and safe. I have cried in nearly every corner of this house, and it has held me and my tears. I have felt scared here. I felt lost here. I have felt despondent and dissociative. I have also felt happy here, and I have found myself here. I have had plenty of room to handle all those things as I figured out what I wanted next. I needed that space. And this peach house, with her big loquat trees hanging heavy with fruit, and her mystery citrus trees that could never get enough water, and her perfect rain watching porch, provided me the space I needed to heal.
In The Poetics of Space, there’s a part I have thought about since Tucker read it to me aloud:
“Sometimes the house of the future is better built, lighter and larger than all the houses of the past, so that the image of the dream house is opposed to that of the childhood home. Late in life, with indomitable courage, we continue to say that we are going to do what we have not yet done: we are going to build a house. This dream house may be merely a dream of ownership, the embodiment of everything that is considered convenient, comfortable, healthy, sound, desirable, by other people. It must therefore satisfy both pride and reason, two irreconcilable terms.”
And at the beginning of the pandemic, I knew that if I could figure it out logistically, I would want to try and buy the next place I lived in. I now know that I’m not looking to satisfy pride or reason; I am simply looking for what’s next. My dream house can be anything so long as it feels like home.
After many big decisions, career moves, lenders, realtors, and tears, I am finally excited about what’s next. I am elated and prepared to be searching for a home again because thanks to this peach house, in all her splendor, I know what that feels like.
Reading: Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America by Ijeoma Oluo. Also a letter from my dear friend Morgan that arrived in the mail this morning.
Watching: Preparing to introduce my friend Ruthie to Drag Race tonight for the first time ever. Trying to figure out whether to start her with Season 6 or All Stars 1,2, and 3 and then work backward. Please feel free to email me your feelings on this.
Buying: More stasher bags for office lunches. Also some hair clips from Chunks.
Writing: A lot about home, a little about family.
WOWEE ZOWEE! You’ve made it this far! Thank you for supporting me by subscribing to this newsletter and sharing it with your friends. It means the world to me that you’d continue to invite me into your internet living room.
Let’s say for a second that you like what you see here and want to continue the support. In that case, you can do one or more of the following:
Forward this email to a few friends who would dig it.
Buy me a coffee.
Follow me on Instagram and share my work there.
Follow the publication I co-founded with the imitable Beth Hitchcock.
Hire me to write for your publication!