The 45 Project, part 5: Home

This is my first time living in a neighborhood since I left home for college. I’ve lived in dorms, apartments, and condos, but never in a house, and never in what you’d call a neighborhood. In New York an actual whole house was a financial impossibility for me — just buying my 1-bedroom apartment after 10 years of saving was a hard road in such a madly expensive housing market. But even after moving to Jacksonville, where land is so aplenty that condos often cost more than houses, I still sought out apartments for the first 5 years. Many years of being a woman living alone had left me with certain habits and fears — and one of them is that houses felt too big to feel safe in, too many doors and windows, too many ways in. In an apartment, you only have to monitor one door, and you can put a nice heavy extra lock on it.

Even as a kid, I remember us having dinner at the home of a family friend, a woman living alone in a lovely house, and thinking as we drove away at the end of the evening: isn’t she scared here by herself?

I didn’t end up moving into a house again until I met my Bear. He’s a good protector, and he’s the kind of person that can figure out how anything works given enough time, so he’s also very handy at fixing the seemingly endless things that need attention in an old home. And frankly he’s such a big person, that no apartment really seems appropriately sized for him.

We bought our first home together just as the pandemic hit — we made the offer just a couple of weeks before lockdown changed everything — and painting, repairing, arranging, and nesting turned out to be beautiful, critical comforts during such a terribly fearful time. As an essential worker, Bear left the house each day to walk into danger, and I got up early to paint the trim room by room with a children’s paintbrush because it was one thing that I could control, that I could make right.

Before COVID, I’d always traveled a lot for work, and Bear has a lot of wanderlust — always wanting us to plan another trip, even when we’re on one — so the pandemic was the first time I’d ever been home for as long as a month, let alone for a year, let alone for two.

Now that the world has opened up and we’re all expected to go back out into it, I find that I don’t really want to. I find that I’m happiest at home.

After an entire adult life lived in an apartment complex or on a specific block — or one isolating experience in a gated “community” — I actually live in a neighborhood. I have neighbors — nosy ones who look out for me and gossip about me, and distant ones I only wave at. I have a yard with grass that needs mown and bushes that need trimmed. When I go outside for the mail, someone walking by or sitting on their own porch says hello. When I sit at my desk working, I watch the life of the neighborhood from my office windows — pairs of women walking together and talking about their problems, people walking their dogs, runners, parents walking their kids to the park, kids who walk themselves to school, an elder who slowly walks the neighborhood every day with a cold beer wrapped in a napkin, another elder who rides his bike around and around the same block as his midday exercise. A woman whose daily walks past our house let me witness the ups and downs of her beloved dog’s long sickness — on his good days he walks, and most days now he rides in a cart. A woman whose daily walks past our house let me witness her journey from herself, to pregnant, to very pregnant, to herself-sized but pushing a stroller.

We chose the house for the windows, and the big open room in the front, and the school district — trying to make good choices in hopes for our future children. We repainted the whole exterior “Peace Yellow,” and Bear kindly went along with my color choice — I’ve always loved a yellow house, and he loves me. It’s a “historic” neighborhood, which here in northeast Florida means near the mighty St. John’s River, and full of old beautiful trees, and dotted with sidewalks that mysteriously just end mid-block. And old homes with lots of problems and lots of character — a fair tradeoff, in my opinion. People on phone calls with me have asked if the bird sounds in the background are a recording — but they’re actual birds. Birdsong and wind chimes have replaced sirens and honks as the main sounds around me.

For the past couple of months, Bear has been away a lot for work, and I’ve found my old fear returning — alone in a house that feels a little too big, with a lot of windows and doors, on a street that seems way too dark at night. When I’m reading in bed and hear sounds outside, I make up ominous stories before remembering to trust my experience of the neighborhood that comforts me so much in the daylight. I suppose your old fears don’t leave you.

This week, we prepped our house and community and psyches for the uncertainty and fear and overstimulation that comes with a hurricane watch. Every area of the country has its natural disaster to contend with — earthquakes, fires, tornadoes, hurricanes. Growing up in Indiana we were afraid of tornadoes, where you have almost no notice that a cone of destruction is about to descend somewhere near you. In New York most of the things we worried about were manmade. Here in Florida it’s hurricanes, where you have days to worry and wonder what path the storm is going to take and what it’s going to do when it gets to you. To make decisions about whether you’re going to leave or stay, and when. To bring in or tie down any furniture or potted plants outside your house. To buy toilet paper, and gasoline, and candles and nonperishable foods, as stores run out of everything and the air grows thick with tension and fear. To charge up all your devices, and fill up the bathtub with water, and pray for your family’s safety, knowing as you do so that the storm has to hit somewhere — that someone’s family will be affected no matter what.

I was out of town for work when it became clear that Hurricane Ian was coming toward Jacksonville. I could have waited it out where I was, but all I could think about was that I had to get home — if I’m going to hunker down somewhere, it’s going to be there. It’s where my people are. It’s where I belong.

I used to wonder what they were thinking when watching footage of people who didn’t evacuate before a hurricane, but now I understand. It’s hard to convince yourself to leave your home behind. It’s hard to convince yourself that your home won’t protect you.

This morning, after the storm has passed, I stepped out my front door to take a look at the new world. My yellow house was still where it had always been. The trees were still standing. The sky was clear. The grass needed mowing. My neighbors said hello. Hurricane Ian robbed many people of that simple experience, and will change the lives of even more people before it’s through. My turn to stand in the street and lament my losses may very well still come one of these days. For now, I’m grateful for my port in the storm.

This is part of a monthly series, The 45 Project, reflecting on my first 45 years — find the other installments here.