Twenty-Five Bucks in Trinkets and Beads

Tomorrow, I will become a woman. I met with my very first real estate agent last week to begin the process of finding, and then purchasing, our very first house. I very nearly died.

Neither my husband nor I have ever bought a house. We decided to mortgage our educations instead. We did not follow the proscribed steps to adulthood with which we were raised: go to college, get married, get a job, buy a house, have kids, buy a bigger house, buy a mini van and so on. Our route looked something like this: get married, go to college some, move across country, go to college some more, move to another state, go to college some more, have kid #1, finish college, move across the country again, get a job, move across country again, have kid #2, pay on student loans forever.

Since I am the one with the most time on my hands, it has been tasked to me to do that which frightens the tar out of me. Tomorrow our real estate agent with very expensive hair is picking me up. I will ride around town in her moderately expensive car hoping I don't smell like last night's cheeseburger and look at houses. This makes me so nervous I feel like I might vomit said cheeseburger in the footwell of said car.

This is roughly what we can afford in our current neighborhood.
Photo courtesy of The Morgue File

Remember when there was a housing crash? Well, Seattle doesn't. Sure, the houses went from astronomically overpriced to appallingly overpriced a few years ago, but the Chief Lou put it best when he said: "It seems a little strange to think of a quarter million dollars as an incredible steal."  And that is precisely what we are looking for: an incredible steal. You see, we have these kids. They like their schools. I like their schools. The PTA has grown accustomed to my face. The fact that we are renting in a neighborhood that is really populated with more well-to-do (or at least more fiscally organized) people than we are never really occurred to us when the jBird took her first gleeful steps up the hill to kindergarten at our neighborhood school. We're "live in the moment" kind of people. This moment is distinctly uncomfortable for me.

I am a vagabond at heart. The six years we've lived in Seattle is the longest I've lived anywhere since I was 13 years old. I have no hometown. There is no house with my childhood bedroom still intact somewhere. Home, to me, has always just been whatever structure contained the people I loved. Like the early Native Americans, the notion of owning land is somewhat foreign and preposterous to me. I am hoping to run into a like-minded soul who will sell me some prime real estate for twenty-five bucks' worth of trinkets and beads. I probably have that much saved up in my couch. Yet, in spite of my protestations, I long for paint colors that I picked out. I want to be able to rip up carpet if it smells like a dog. I want to build a chicken coop and raised garden beds. I want to change out an ugly faucet if my heart desires it. I want to settle. My vagabond heart will always want to wander, no matter where I live, but my traveling shoes are wearing thin. I have these kids, you see. They like their lives. I like their lives.

So for them. Tomorrow I will put on my grown up pants - the ones without holes, the ones that don't fall down as much, the ones that feel a bit stiff and uncomfortable - and I will choke back the rising gorge of cheeseburger and fear and I will look at houses. I will look at houses so that they can have a home.

Because

It's a bit of madness, creativity is. It's the kind of thing that makes you spend 3 hours on a rainy Friday afternoon trying to knit with foodstuffs for the pure enjoyment of it. You catch yourself ramming your head against a problem repeatedly, clock ticking, heart beating a little faster, fingers dripping with olive oil and reeking of onions - and enjoying it. For what? For nothing, really. And for everything. For taking your ideas and making them live, for seeing if it can be done, for trying something you've never done before, for using the element of us that is divine - the ability to create.

Somewhere along the line, some people learn to say I'm not creative because their own breed of creativity doesn't match what they see as the "right" kind, or because someone told them that, or because they tried something once and failed, or because, because, because... Sometimes I think it's because the madness is frightening. Because you do end up spending the afternoon with skewers, chopsticks, knitting needles and mutilated vegetables and the all-important question of life and death becomes "How can I weave in the ends of this spaghetti without breaking it?" And then because sometimes you discover after all of your effort, you can't. Not today, not with the materials you have, and you chuck it in the compost and go back to that first square and start again.

For what? For itself. That's what. But it's a bit of madness. It's irresponsible, it's unproductive, it's unprofitable, it's impractical. This bit of madness has changed the face of civilization repeatedly for millennia. Because somebody looked at the mold on bread and wondered about its properties, we can treat illnesses that used to kill. Because someone wondered if they could fly and crashed and crashed and crashed and then flew. Because somebody wondered why apples fall from trees, we now have vehicles that go into space. Because.

I'm not a Fleming, or a Wright, or a Newton. My dressing up a fish hasn't changed the face of civilization. I will likely pass into oblivion when I go, not to be studied by school children who would dress up in overlarge jeans with holes and muss up their hair so as to impersonate me on "biography day" at school. But I would argue for the civilizing effects of dressing up a fish.

 Because I met so many new people this week that I would not have otherwise: fishermen, shop keepers, artists, authors, actors, impersonators. I wandered parts of my city that I usually overlook. Because I spent a lovely afternoon with my daughter and my friend, basking in this small segment of our community who come together once a year out of a love of books and and food. Because I discovered that leeks knit better than green onions. A sole is related to a halibut. Cilantro doesn't knit at all. Crochet with noodles is easier than knitting. Because I gave away my sole to a strange man in impossible cowboy boots. Because I get to end my day with the reinforcement of faith that people are basically nice and strange and encouraging and unique and creative and I am part of that. You are part of that. Because.

Just because. "Knitted Comforts for the Sole"