The Background, The Update, and some of The Past

In March 2008, I informed friends and relatives near and far that I was leaving Portland (after several good efforts and attempts at a secure existence there) and moving back home (and not home as in “Minneapolis; City That I Escaped To And Enjoyed For 10 Years”-home, but home-home, as in that speck of a town that is not known for anything special where I grew up and dreamt of escaping and where my parents still live). This town that my parents ended up moving to in 1975, after having originally and fled their respective rural southern Minnesota upbringings for Minneapolis in the sixties, meeting, and making me. For the first three years of my life, we lived there, in an apartment above a pet store in the Linden Hills neighborhood. We had a large rooftop garden and lived about three blocks from sparkly Lake Harriet, where I enjoyed my mother’s undivided attention and lots of time being towed around on errands in my red wagon. We then relocated to Duluth, a very beautiful but very cold city on Lake Superior and lived in a house very close to the shore. I was fascinated by the fake fireplace, not so much by my cold bedroom with the vinyl wood grain accordion door. I was a precocious toddler, not fussy, but consistently freaked out by the foreboding despairing blearing of the horns from barges passing on the lake. (It was during this time that I starting speaking in a British accent for about a year. More on that later, if it comes up again.) We were there for about a year. Then we ended up in this town, in a rental house that had the most amazing clematis growing on the east. Flowers as big as a toddler’s head, I’m telling you. Then, in 1976, with the help of the good old V.A., we moved into what is the house being (sort of) discussed right now. I remain slightly bitter that my parents, who escaped into the city, ended up leaving it and taking me with them. (Oh, the places I’d have gone! The things I’d have done! The people I’d have met! The trouble I’d have gotten into…) Of course I wanted to be with them… but as the years racked up and I grew restless, I just didn’t want us (especially me) to be where we ended up.

So, many years later, after having escaped to many large cities myself, isn’t it curious that I have done exactly the same thing? This place is so much the same and so different than it used to be, as am I. This place and I are also so much alike and yet so different from each other, just as we have always been. We are each too stubborn to bend as much as it would require to provide all of the things the other would like. After all, this is still a small town in rural Minnesota, and I am still a lesbian. (Add single and child-free to that.) But, I would rather be a lesbian living here than a lot of other places. Nevertheless, just by being here, the odds of me being the crazy spinster lady with the wooden shoes and the yard full of dachshunds just increased considerably.

When I explained to my friends what I would be doing when I rolled my caravan back into Minnesota, they expressed an interest in following my “project.” Maybe most were just being enthusiastic or supportive in that "yeah... you'll have to keep me updated" kind of way, but a couple of very dear friends actually wanted me to write about it as I bumble along. In typical Me style, I’m just getting around to it. It is now January 2009, and they are probably not so interested anymore, or if they are, they have no idea what they are in for at this point. Several people mentioned that I should create a blog and track the house project for them. There has been so much else that is not house-related that has kept me very busy. (Look at me! I am already a couple long paragraphs into justifying the navel-gazing of this whole thing!) Anyway, as I thought about writing publicly about this whole thing, I was reluctant for some reasons, but the intrigue won out. I mean, why not hang out (or throw out, as the case may be) all of your family laundry on the damned internet, just like everyone else? I waffled, as I am wont to do. But I kept hearing myself describing things that I would encounter and experience, and it played in my head like a segment of This American Life. Coming back home to look after parents and properties and paperwork and things left undone for years seems good, right? It mostly feels good to get things in order. I think that it generally is a good idea. Sometimes, though, it seems like a step back in time and then just sitting there for a while, wondering where all the time went. I pulled into the driveway here on April 26th, 2008, and I don’t even know where the time has gone, just since then. I know I have been busy, originally with the house, then with a lot of other things. There’s so much that has happened since I have been home to allow it to happen, to be here to take care of things. All of this, via a building I have returned to reclaim and rehabilitate after having not lived in it for 18 years in a town that I have not visited for 12.

So where’s the stuff about the house? This change/overturn/upend/clean-up-loose-ends thing is about so much more than a house. I have no delusions of creative grandeur, but I do have some interesting things to do, make, and share. I hope I have some readers and I hope that they find some sort of entertainment in the whole thing. I have been reading lots of other blogs detailing peoples’ adventures with remodeling and restoring houses. I could have this be a strictly house-informative report like some of the other ones, but where’s the fun in that? One interesting thing that I have noticed in my readings is the tendency for people to refer to themselves as being owned by their house, not vice versa. In embarking upon my own house adventure a few things are different for me. I already know that I am owned by the house, regardless of the fact that I have not lived there recently. I also know the previous owners. By coming back to my small hometown and reclaiming and correcting and living in this house, I am, in many ways, reclaiming and correcting and dealing with the whole experience of what it was to grow up here and live here in this house the first time. I literally and figuratively get to appreciate the charm, functionality, and the comfort, but throw out what is not needed, gut what is fucked up, fix what may be broken, and then and build it back up the right way, and possibly better than ever. I’ve been away for a while. I see things differently now.