feeling at home | Bertram's Blog

Impact of Owing A House

August 11, 2021 — Pat Bertram

On my way home from the library yesterday, I passed the hardware store and exchanged a few words with the workers who were outside taking a break. When I continued on, it dawned on me that owning a house has had some odd impacts on my life, including this one. I had never before been on a first name basis with any hardware store employee. Nor has any hardware store employee ever known where I lived. One of the workers lives around the corner from me, but that’s just a coincidence. Mostly they know me because of deliveries they have made to my house.

I’m also on a first name basis with contractors and other laborers.

Those aren’t the only impacts on my life because of home ownership, they are just the ones that got me to thinking. Some of the changes to my life since moving here would be the same whether I owned or rented, such as a library within a few blocks, easy access to a grocery store, and nice neighbors. I tend to think the neighbors are a bit nicer to me because I own the house; after all, if I own, I am one of them and will be around for a long time if everything goes as planned. Also, I’ll take care of my property unlike most of the renters around here.

The most basic impact is a feeling of being at home. As long as Jeff and I were together, I always felt at home because as long as we were together, that was my home. After he died, I tried to find a sense of home in myself, and mostly succeeded. Oddly, until now, the feeling of being at home was strongest when I was camping in a national park because to a certain extent, the parks belong to me (to all of us), and when I paid my camping fee, that small plot of land was specifically mine for the nights I stayed there.

Almost as important as a feeling of being at home is peace of mind. For almost the entire decade after Jeff died, I was unsettled and uncertain. I often brooded about what I wanted, where I wanted to move, where I could afford to live, how to start over. That last point was a major one, because truly, how does one start their life from scratch? Well, I’ve done it — started my new life — so I don’t have to think about that anymore. Nor do I have to think about where to go because I’m here. And, since I’m working, I don’t have to worry how to pay for this new life.

Also, for the first time in a decade, I don’t think about what I have to get rid of. I got rid of a huge amount of stuff after Jeff died, and then again before I moved my things into storage after my father died, and yet again before I moved here. Even though the current philosophy seems to be that if you haven’t used something in a year, you should get rid of it, I don’t subscribe to that idea any more. I’ve gotten rid of so many things over the years I needed to repurchase, that as long as I have space, I might as well keep what I have. Obviously, as time goes on and I reach my expiration date, I’ll have to get rid of almost everything so no one will have the huge chore of sorting through my stuff when I’m gone, but until them, everything I own has a place. After the huge increase in possessions when I bought this house and furnished it as well as adding a garage, I’ve made no major additions to my possessions. Well, there are all the outside things I’m doing — the landscaping and plants and such — but those aren’t really possessions, they are simply additions to the property that will remain in place.

Having a permanent address is another benefit of owning my house since I won’t have to change the address until . . . well, until I have to because of age or whatever.

I’m sure there many other ways that home ownership has affected my life but they don’t come to mind at the moment. What does come to mind, however, is the thought — still so surprising to me — of how much I love owning my own home. I can feel it wrap around me like a well-worn and comfortable garment. Any place I’ve lived in the past was simply a place to park myself, but owning a house makes me feel as if I have a partner in life, as if the house and I are in this together. I take care of it, and so far, it has taken care of me.

And yes, I am exceedingly grateful for this blessing.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator

Posted in home, house, life. Tags: benefits of owning a house, feeling at home, getting rid of stuff, hardware store employees, owning a house, owning my own home, peace of mind. 13 Comments »

Feels Like Home

March 4, 2021 — Pat Bertram

Someone asked me today if it were a cultural shock for me living here in this rural corner of the state after growing up in Denver. I told her that it felt the same, that it felt like home. If I had moved here directly from Denver, it might be a different matter, but I left Denver when too many people from out of the state moved in and immediately tried to change the slow-moving town to a great city. When I was growing up, Denver was a cowtown without a skyline, and fabulous views of the mountains from wherever I stood. Each neighborhood was a town in itself, with churches, schools, stores, a library, all within walking distance. The political bent was . . . well, there was no bend; beliefs seemed to hover right about in the middle. People tended to vote their beliefs rather than follow the party, and overall, it seemed to be centrist. There was some crime and some poorer neighborhoods, but there were no gangs or gang-related activities.

Then came the California invasions. Now Denver is indistinguishable from other major cities, with gangs galore, horrendous social problems, outrageous real estate prices, an agenda the rest of the state has a hard time dealing with, and no autonomous neighborhoods.

I am grateful to be out of that mess, grateful to have found a place that feels like home, that feels like the neighborhood “town” I came from.

The conversation, however, made me wonder why people leave an area they are dissatisfied with and immediately try to change their new location to mimic the old one. Although this is the current problem with a lot of immigrants — people want to change the laws in this country to make it more like the place they came from — it’s also a problem when large numbers of people move from one state to another.

I blame Californians for the change, but New Yorkers cause just as many problems in some areas. In fact, someone from New York recently moved here and is trying to steer this town toward being more of an artist’s colony like Taos rather than accepting it for what it is — a quiet, rather impoverished though congenial town with a lot to offer as it stands today.

I know people prefer what they are familiar with, but migrators — either internal or international — generally leave to go to a new place in search of a better life, so why try to make the new way like the old?

This isn’t simply a problem from state to state, but also from one area to another within a state. I spent some years in the high desert of California, across the mountains from the Los Angeles sprawl. At one time, it was a quiet place, but the state tried to break up the big-city gangs by getting families to relocate to the desert. Now, the place is rife with gang-related troubles, including drugs and crime.

It’s as if they (whoever “they” are) want to turn the whole world into a cesspool. Migrators seem to go along with this agenda because they believe in the rightness of their cause and the wrongness of people who want to live their lives by their own religious beliefs rather than the political beliefs of others. It’s not a surprise there are problems; there always are when the rights of the few are given precedence over the rights of the many.

But I’m migrating away from the topic of this blog. Mostly I’m trying to understand the mentality of those who leave one horrible area and immediately try to change their new environment into an equal horror rather than trying to fit in with the local culture. Though I suppose the truth is they don’t think of the change as horror. Nor do they see anything wrong with what they are doing. Many such immigrants I’ve met have a touch of arrogance about them, as if they thought they were bringing light to a dark area, and never realize they could be a dark bringer instead.

Luckily, this place is small enough and rural enough and independently-minded enough that it will be years before it’s changed all out of recognition. Luckily too, if it’s changed faster than I think it will be, I have my own place — my own personal gated place — and within this enclosure, I can still be at home no matter what goes on outside the fence.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

Posted in culture, home, life. Tags: changing an area, feeling at home, growing up in Denver, immigrants who want to change their new home to be like their old one, immigration problems, migration from state to state. 6 Comments »

At Home

February 12, 2021 — Pat Bertram

Several friends have each recently bought a travel trailer, motor home, or camper, and are planning on hitting the road. I don’t know why the sudden urge people have to be on the move. Perhaps their age dictates a now-or-never attitude. Maybe it’s being holed up at home for so long. It could be any number of reasons, actually. Not that it matters. They are going and I am not.

I spent my one-last-trip travel money on a garage, which, considering the weather this year, was a great investment. My car is out of the cold, and when I do need to drive, I don’t have to spend the time uncovering it. Nor do I have to clear away snow or worry about the car not starting. (What I do have to worry about is the choke — the last guy who worked on the car either didn’t set it right or knocked it out of whack, because when it’s frigid out, the poor car bucks and stutters, and I haven’t had a chance to get it fixed yet.)

I haven’t gotten rid of any of my camping or hiking gear in case I do decide to go on a camping trip someday, but for the most part, I am where I want to be. No amount of wanderlust, no desire to be in the mountains or to see different things outweighs the sheer joy of being in my own house, wandering around my own yard.

It seems odd that after all those years of looking for adventure, the only outdoor adventure I find is in my own backyard, though admittedly, it’s been so cold, I don’t spend much time outside except to sweep snow off my ramp or to shovel the sidewalk, but still, it’s my place to go out and enjoy whenever I wish.

I feel fortunate, not only to have a place to call my own, but that I actually want to be there! So often, during the years after Jeff’s death, I didn’t want to be anywhere, and whatever place I happened to be didn’t really seem to fit; I could feel itchiness and discomfort as if I were wearing ill-fitting clothes. I had such a need to escape those “clothes” that being on the move seemed to be the only time I felt vaguely like myself.

Now, surprisingly, I feel like myself all the time. That’s a major change, and a welcome one. Not only do I not feel the need to travel to understand my very existence as I once did (hence the poster accompanying this blog that I made back in my wanderlust days), I’m not sure I even worry much about trying to understand my existence. It’s more important for me just to be, to be in the here and now, to be at home.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

Posted in Adventure, life. Tags: being where I am supposed to be, feeling at home, feeling like myself, urge toward adventure, wanderlust. 4 Comments »

Quantum State of Grief

November 16, 2020 — Pat Bertram

It’s kind of funny that after all these years after Jeff died, after all the years of grief and then the subsequent years of no grief (at least not more than a momentary pang or two of nostalgia), I still sometimes fall into the magical, quantum state of grief where Jeff seems to be both alive and dead.

I know he’s gone. I feel it in the very depths of my being. But sometimes, when I’m going about my daily life (that doesn’t seem anywhere near as ill-fitting as it once did), I find myself thinking one of those quantum thoughts.

Last night, as I wandered from room to room preparing for the night (checking to make sure the doors are locked, turning down the bed covers, making sure I have a glass of water on the nightstand), I thought that I should call his mother to find out how she’s doing, so I can let him know the next time I see him.

The realization of the illogicality of the thought didn’t send me into a spiral of grief, it just made me wonder why that thought, and why now. (Come to think of it, a friend called and mentioned that a mutual acquaintance inherited the care of her hated mother-in-law, which is probably what put the thought in my mind.)

It just goes to show that even when the pain is gone, the habits of grief and grief-thinking linger. That’s not the only stray thought — on more than a couple of occasions, I have found myself wandering through the house, wondering how and where Jeff would fit when he got here.

Hmm. I see a pattern here. I tend to think these thoughts when I am simply wandering from room to room, but that’s no reason to stay put. I do like wandering around my house, feeling the “home” of it. For so long, after he died, I never felt at home anywhere in particular (he had been my home), though I did learn to feel at home wherever I was because . . . well, because that’s where I was. Back then, I had to break myself of the habit of saying I was going home when I returned to one of the places I was inhabiting because it wasn’t home, just a place to roost. I still catch myself editing out the word “home” until I realize that hey! I have a home! It’s not just a place to go back to, but a place to settle into. A place to make my own.

I do wonder what Jeff would think about all this — my moving here, my owning a house, my getting old. (In three days, I will have lived six years longer than he lived.) But mostly, although he’s in the back of my mind and the back of my heart, thoughts of him and his death and my grief no longer dictate my life. Others things dictate the terms now, such as keeping up the house, keeping up my health, trying to hold back the infirmities of an aging body as long as I can. You know — life. Even though I knew from the beginning (odd that I still call his death and my ensuing grief “the beginning”) that the business of life is living — or do I mean the business of living is life? — I never really felt it. I felt the nearness of death and the winds of eternity more than the importance of my continued life.

But here I am, living, despite the occasional and brief lapses into the magical realism and quantum state of grief.

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Posted in grief, home, life. Tags: death of a soul mate, feeling at home, illogicality of grief, learning to live after grief, magical realism of grief, state of grief. 10 Comments »

At Home No Matter Where I Am

October 25, 2015 — Pat Bertram

When one moves to a new house or apartment, it seems to take forever to get settled in, but when one lives more of a nomadic life, it takes almost no time to become entrenched.

I’ve been housesitting for about seven weeks now. The owners will be returning in a few days, so I spent yesterday morning clearing out the bulk of what I’ve had here with me and settling the items in my storage unit. Admittedly, many of the things I stored were purchases for my upcoming camping trip, such as my tent and camping lounge chair rather than items I’d removed from storage for personal use. (BTW, that folding lounge chair is huge!! It folds up way bigger than the specs said, and barely fits in my car but will be a great camp cot.)

It feels funny buying things. I don’t like shopping, don’t like “things” and yet, my upcoming road/camping/hiking trip is so far out of my normal lifestyle that I have very little that translates from a sedentary life to a mobile one.

I’ve been getting most of the stuff I need online. Whenever I go to a sporting goods store, I can’t find what I want and can’t find anyone to help me. But I can research online without trudging down huge aisles of stuff that I don’t want and that wouldn’t fit even if I did want. Besides, some of my gear comes from specialty companies, such as Pacerpoles and Solo Stove, a camping stove that uses bits of twigs for fuel. Not that I plan on cooking (I don’t cook now, at least not much), but it will be nice to be able to have a warm drink on a cold night and to have a hot water bottle to warm the bed. (I’m chilled at night now, and it’s a torrid 72° in the house. But then, I’m adapted to the heat, and — fingers crossed — I’ll adapt to the cold.)

I’ve been spending so much time preparing for my trip that it didn’t really hit me until last night that I’m planning on camping in the winter. Winter? I must be out of my mind, especially since this will be my first attempt at such an escapade, and most especially since this will be an El Nino year. Even along the southernmost border, the weather could get very cold and very wet. Eek.

And yet, why not? I will be staying with friends along the way, and in between, if it’s too wet for camping, I can get a motel. Besides, it’s all about the adventure. Seeing what I can do with what life throws at me and seeing what I can throw back at it.

Still, I will be prepared for emergencies, if not mentally, then physically, with a carload of warm clothing and survival gear. And, of course, I’ll have my phone, along with a solar charger (assuming there will be some sun somewhere) and an external battery. With a phone, I should be able to keep track of the weather, even if only sporadically, and make plans accordingly. Adventure is one thing. Danger is something entirely different, and it’s not on my agenda.

I seem to be getting far from my original premise of this blog about how quickly I manage to get settled in now that I’m sort of nomadic, but perhaps I’m still on target. After all, no matter where I am, there my home will be, and it will be nice to feel at home wherever I am.

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(Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.”)

Posted in Adventure, life. Tags: adapting to cold, crosscountry road trip, el nino year, feeling at home, nomadic life, winter camping. 2 Comments »

Why Do I Continue to Dream of an Epic Walk?

June 5, 2015 — Pat Bertram

Somehow I can’t get the idea of an epic walk out of my head, though the reality of such a journey seems beyond my capabilities and even inclination. I can walk, that’s not a problem, especially since there would be no speed or distance requirement. (My journey; my rules!) But carrying several days worth of food and water, along with sleeping essentials and emergency supplies is a bit much. Even though the backpacking products today are gossamer weight compared to products made a couple of decades ago, the packed pack, no matter how ultra light, would be more than I could deal with. The improbability of such a journey is what prompted me to get my car restored (or rather, try to get it restored. They are still working on it). If I am going to make a trip by car instead of on foot, I’d prefer to look like a near-classic woman in a near-classic car rather than like a bag lady in a rattletrap. At least, that was the plan.

So why do I continue to dream of and research/prepare for an epic walk? For the longest time, I didn’t know the answer to that. I thought a desire for adventure was fostering the idea, but there are all kinds of adventures, one of which I am on now — housesitting for a friend and walking the three miles from her house to the dance studio every day. (It doesn’t sound like much until you add in the two to four hours of classes.)

The truth is (as I have recently discovered), I feel at home on foot. The easy swing of arms, the push/thrust of first one leg and then the other is comforting. I can feel each step as it connects to the earth (or sidewalk or road or whatever) and I know where I am even if I don’t know where I am. Seeing the world at a walking pace suits me just fine — I can feel the nuances of a place as well as see the small details. And, as Steven Wright said, “Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time.” (Well, it would be if there were bridges over the ocean and other major waterways.)

I especially like the simplicity of walking. There are no engines to start, no doors to climb through, no dashboards and rear view mirrors to watch. All I have to do is go outside, and there I am, walking.

What I don’t always like about walking is the return trip. I can’t go as far as I want because I have to save enough energy to get back to my starting point, but what if I didn’t need to get back to my starting point? What if I could keep going? It’s those “what ifs” even more than a desire for adventure that made me wonder about taking some sort of long distance walk.

I could always do a yo-yo hike, which is probably what I’ll do for a while — just go out to a national park or BLM land where I can camp by my car, walk or hike with a minimum of gear, and then return to my car camp site for the evening. That way I’m never far from access to civilization. But then, there would always be the return trip to the car, having to gauge my distance to make sure I could get back to the car where my camping gear would be. And so I dream . . .

Meantime, there are my small walks — the walk to the studio, grocery stores, out in the desert. There might not be any epicness to such adventures, but at least for the time I am afoot, I feel at home, and that is no small thing.

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Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

Posted in Adventure, life. Tags: desire for adventure, feeling at home, joy of walking, long distance walk, taking a walk, why I walk. 9 Comments »

Living Light and Free

March 25, 2013 — Pat Bertram

When I first started writing about my idea of living on the go after my current responsibilities end, I got many emails, comments, and messages suggesting a Winnebago, fifth wheel, or any of a variety of houses on wheels. Not so coincidentally, I’ve been noticing a plethora of such vehicles hogging the road, and frankly, I have absolutely no interest in that means of travel. (Though I do appreciate the interest in my plans.)

I know people love the convenience of taking their home with them, but such vehicles have always appalled me. They seem like civilization at its worst, the ultimate in conspicuous consumption and arrogance, dabbling in nature while not giving up comfort or technology. The only thing more appalling to me is the RV culture that has grown up around such a lifestyle, and I want no part of it.

The w Route 66 hole point of my journey is to travel light, being free to go where whim and circumstances carry me. To find home inside me or perhaps in the journey itself, to feel at home wherever I might be, whether it is a small town, a big city, the open road, or beside a mountain stream. There is no place in this vision — this vision quest — for a lumbering vehicle with a high environmental impact.

Besides that, a home on wheels screams loudly and clearly, “I am not of you. I am just passing through.” And for however long I stay in one place, I want to be of that place, a part of it in any way I can, to experience it not as a tourist, but in some more intimate way. It’s possible I’m just fooling myself, but still, this journey is supposed to be on my own terms, and my terms are that less is best. I’ve never really owned much, not even real furniture since I prefer empty rooms, and I sure don’t want to start owning things now.

To begin with, I will have enough of my past that I can’t get rid of — things that I made or were made for me, household goods my life mate/soul mate and I shared, belongings that remind me of who we were — and so I’ll need to rent a storage unit. Someday maybe even these few possessions can be disposed of, and then I really will be light and free.

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