The ones that used to live here, and the ones who live here now.

With every day that passes, the house begins to feel more like a home. The only room that smells like me, that truly smells familiar and safe, is my kitchen. The fact that I can even say “my kitchen” and not “the kitchen,” the simple application of pronoun over article, proves as much. The rest of the rooms are too new, the paint too fresh, and even though my furniture — the dining room table, the rugs, the little coffee table I asked my dad to strip and stain for me — stand in the rooms, it still smells like something that isn’t yet mine.

I struggle with this, so I return home from happy hour with company coworkers and I arm myself by putting on Beatles records; I pour myself a glass of Woodford Double Oaked; I sit at the kitchen table with my feet up on a chair and I write, because those things in combination feel like home. Eventually I’ll begin to feel it. Even now, being able to stroll from room to room while on my nightly phone call with mum (she insists, and out of love, perhaps out of loneliness, I acquiesce easily to this new ritual), I revel in the amount of space I’ve acquired.

Things that do feel like home, besides sitting and writing and drinking whiskey: doing laundry in my basement, carefully ignoring the reality that long-legged centipedes are probably thriving down there in a damp and until recently, six-months-vacant building. Walking out of the side door of the basement into the garden and hanging my wet clothes on the line (subsequently, the feeling of squeezing wooden clothespins between my fingers and positioning them carefully on fabrics prone to indentation — care is equivalent to control, control means order, order means content — and does not content breed joy?). The sound of birds singing as I do this — and the birds here are abundant. My three fir trees that line the yard in ascending order probably house a nest or two. I wonder, did the owners who had this home for 20, 30 years, did they do what my family did and buy living Christmas trees with roots intact? And every few years, would they find a spot in the garden and plant these trees, until the tallest one nearly reached the attic, and the smallest cut halfway up the second floor? This space does not feel like my space, not yet, but it feels like a space where love thrived, where memories were made, where families laughed and fought and held each other and built the relationships that formed their very cores.

I found a sleepy bee on my kitchen floor before I sat down to write, so I scooped it into a paper towel and released it outside. I was on the phone with mum when this happened, prompting me to remind her to destroy the RoundUp I know she still has in the backyard. I made her promise, and even as I said it, I felt hypocritical about killing the centipede in my sink this morning amid the array of Greek-tragedy-level drama invoked by my uninvited guest. I did not, however, feel a bit sorry for the black moths sitting on my ceiling both yesterday afternoon and this evening. Fearing an impending food infestation, I disposed of every grain not contained in a glass mason jar and sucked the vagrants into my vacuum by way of a hose extension.

I live here now, and though it does not yet feel as natural as breathing to wake here, I know the ones who don’t belong. I recognize the squatters and the intruders and can differentiate them from the benign visitors and accidental guests, the gentle passers-through. I look into the mirror hanging in my entryway and I know I will eventually recognize myself as the new inhabitant. It will take time. Then again, the gypsy told me when I was 14 that I would live to 93. Time is all I’ve got. So many lifetimes, and this one is just opening up before me like a morning rose. This is what I’ve always wanted. For once, I will allow myself to be in love without self-judgment.

On blank pages, and filling them, slowly.

I suppose it’s time to bring up the fact that I was rejected from my first-choice (only choice) graduate school. It happened back in February, and it took me this long to swallow my shame and my ego and write about it here. To add insult to injury, the e-mailed rejection letter was followed up by a paper rejection for state residency nearly two months later. Really, Michigan? That state has become the land of disappointments for me, first with the crowning heartbreak of my life hailing from just outside of Detroit, now followed by a rejection from a school into which I put a solid chunk of time and effort to make a good impression.

I don’t know. Maybe I’m not quite sure what I would do in graduate school. Maybe teaching and making art isn’t my path.

I spent about four weeks wallowing in the rejection, during which time I started working for a burger and whiskey place, and then my new excitement set in: I would learn everything I could about alcohol. I have a brilliant palate, I can taste all kinds of subtle nuances when it comes to tea, wine, food, and so forth. I just know nothing about this new world. Being from a wine background, with the most topical of knowledge of vodkas due to my parents’ preferred drink, I knew next to nothing about beer, its process, varieties, and so forth, and even less than that about the various spirits. So I did what I do any time I want to know everything about something: I took out a million books at the library and went into full-on mental sponge mode.

It’s a funny thing, working in the food and beverage industry. You tell one person in charge that you have a sincere and vested interest in learning, and suddenly you’re networking organically with restaurant owners and managers, cocktail geniuses, distillery owners, beer distributors, representatives, and on and on and on. It’s very exciting and extremely humbling to be around people who are experts in a topic you know very little about — you ask all kinds of questions, and those people, feeling empowered by the questioning, expose you to an entire world of things you should read, listen to, or try. It’s quite fun, actually, not being in charge for once. It’s a wonderful thing to be in a brand-new environment, know what it means to be a good listener (and a good employee, where applicable), and simply have fruitful conversations all day, every day that you come into work.

I’m working at another local place that opened up recently, a craft beer and browns bar with food themed to pair ideally with various beers. Everything on tap is local, which is fantastic, because it creates the very real ability to meet the people who are making the beers that I pour during every shift. And that just gives me another opportunity to learn something new.

 

There are more things, other things, that I want to write about. Things I want to talk about regarding work relationships, new friendships, re-connections with old friends and potential bridge-rebuilding. Things I want to say about how to heal from a misstep with another person, how terribly I am affected when someone so clearly and obviously dislikes me even when I do everything I can to show that I am actively working to fix my mistakes. There are things I want to write about disappointing my parents, about trying to do right by both the people who love me, with caveats, and the people who love me absolutely and unconditionally.  There is always something to write about self-acceptance, self-respect, dare I say self-love (the hardest challenge of my life). But I haven’t written in a long time now, and there’s too much to express in one post, and too much to say that would span hours and days. I’ll write later.