Ha! I bet you can guess my answer to this blog prompt!
Yep, it’s true. If I could live anywhere in the world, I would choose to live exactly where I am living now — in this tiny forgotten town, in my own house with my own yard and my own flowers, and friends that I seldom make the effort to see but know they are always there for me.
It’s taken me decades to get to this point, decades of uncertainty, sorrow, and fear of not being able to afford to live anywhere. This last is not an uncommon fear among women — even those with financial security worry about becoming a bag lady. In my case, the fear was exacerbated by the growing requirement of being able to pass a credit check when renting, and with my lack of any sort of credit rating, I simply did not know how I was going to navigate that morass. Assuming, of course, I wasn’t priced out of the market.
Exactly ten years ago today, I was feeling rootless, feeling suspended over an abyss with nothing to hang onto, worried as always about my uncertain future. At the time, I’d just returned from my cross-country trip and was staying in a fleabag motel. (Actually, it was a mosquito-bag motel. Eek.) I had no real reason to go back to that town, other than friends and dance class, but I had no place else to go. As I wrote back then: “I have looked at tiny windowless rooms scarcely larger than closets with a higher rent than the three-bedroom house Jeff and I lived in, gated communities that are merely fenced rooming houses, apartments with incredibly stringent requirements. . . . Maybe I don’t belong here in the desert. Maybe I don’t belong anywhere. But then what?”
A few years later, through a series of unexpected events, including an unasked-for email from Zillow showing me a place they said I might like though it was far from that desert town, I found my “then what.” Now here I am, living in the very house Zillow picked out for me, a house I once dreamed up.
I’m sure there are many wonderful places to live, places I might even like to live, but my days of looking beyond the perimeter of my own yard for something more are long gone. With any luck, this is where I will live out my years, with even greater luck, I might even be able to continue taking care of the place. (I still find it humorous that my goal when I got here was to have a care-free yard, and what I ended up with was a mini park that requires several hours of work each week.)
If I could tweak one tiny thing, it would be to have a wilderness walking trail nearby, but considering that I’m not as fanatical about walking as I once was (in fact, I seldom walk at all anymore), that missing trail isn’t as much of a lack as it used to be. The truth is, any outdoor time is spent in my yard. Just this morning, I went out for a quick tour to see how everything was holding up in this heat, and ended up trimming a bush, cutting back leggy yarrow, lopping the tops off New England asters to keep them from browning out, staking the tomato plant, and various other small chores.
Since I wasn’t planning on doing the work, I hadn’t doused myself with mosquito repellant, so I ended up with several new bites, but it’s all good. It’s all part of being at home in my own place, insects and all.
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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One
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