The island I lived on with my love and my dogs and even my
little cat was a dream in more ways than one.
In some sense, it was the ideal place for us. It was a crumbling little house that needed
lots of love in the middle of an orchard long overgrown with blackberries and
nettles. It was full of birds and
flowers in the springtime, apples and deer in the fall. The friends we made opened themselves to us
as though we were family members and old school friends they have had for a
very long time.
But in another sense, it was a dream we had to wake up from
eventually. We didn’t own the place, nor
did we have the money, time, and know how to bring that poor house back from
the brink of death it stands upon. The
very sensible thing to do was to pinch ourselves and move back to a city and
why not the city I’ve been commuting to since I started nursing school in 2010
where I now work? It seemed like the
likely choice. So we moved to Tacoma,
which the locals colloquially call T-town.
Joseph and I have lived in Seattle, it was where we met and where we
lived before we moved to the island. But
living in a city was a second nature for both of us and much of the city habits
we developed were quickly shed when we crossed the ferry to our new home eight
years ago. Coming to T-town has been a
rude awakening in some senses, and also a bit of a dream in its own right.
So living amongst packing dust with our life scattered about
us in poorly labeled boxes, Joseph and I found ourselves trying to conquer our
fears and concerns one small job at a time.
And I’ve come to learn a few things:
1. Don’t flush
diapers down the toilet. The
plumbing in the new house was speaking to us.
Literally. When you flushed the
toilet the bath tub gurgled. When we ran
the dishwasher--good gods, a dish washer!
I was beginning to think such things were myths!--the sink wheezed. Finally, after two showers and a toilet
flush, the plumbing had had it and everything backed up and pooled in the bath
tub in a rather disconcerting display of color and texture. I texted my landlord (a woman I work with who
is a godsend) and within a 24 hours we had the men out here to router our
septic line.
The day was windy, the dogs were going nuts having to live
in a new house and a new when the smart, upstanding guy and his slack jawed
helper came to clear up the house’s old pipes.
There was a mess in the living room I was working on to make room for
our couch and the dogs had to be shoved in the laundry room with the baby gate
we bought for them in place. The guys
had me turn on all the water and flush the toilet multiple times to see if
anything would back up again, and as it turns out, they did a top-notch job.
The slack jawed guy showed me what he thought was a handy
wipe and said, “You can’t flush these handy-wipes.”
The upstanding guy called from across the yard, “That’s a
diaper, turn it around.”
The slack jawed guy obliged and we both saw that it was
indeed a diaper.
“You can’t flush these diapers,” the slack jawed guy told
me.
“Good to know,” I said.
“Hey,” said the upstanding guy, “they just moved in, it’s
not their diaper.”
But the advice was taken, I will never flush a diaper as
long as I live.
2. Have ghosts, will
travel. It was well documented both
by my landlord and other people who have lived in this house that this house is
not haunted. So my only explanation for why
we’ve still been having spooky little events like the feeling someone else is
in the bathroom while we’re in the shower, or my dog Sally being completely
freaked out in an empty room by herself is that the ghost from the old house
came with us to the new house. But that’s
okay. I’m used to the ghost and having a
friend in a new place is always welcome.
My landlord made me promise her that if the ghost turns out to be a
poltergeist, that I wear a helmet if I allow it to slide me from one point to
another on the floor. She’s a nurse, so
she’s all about safety.
3. “Make new friends but keep the old, one is
silver and the other’s gold.” The
new place is full of potential friends. A
lady at Safeway greeted me like an old friend, even though I had not seen her
before in my life. I then realized, when
she greeted me again as I walked the dogs one day, that she lives a couple of blocks away from my
house.
On another dog walk, a woman yelled to me from across the
street, “Alan! Hey, Alan!”
“I’m sorry,” I said, “I’m not Alan.”
“Who are you, then?”
“I’m Frank,” I told her.
“Oh, well, you walk just like Alan. I’ve been thinking you were Alan for two days
now.”
Oh, great, so she has not only been watching me walk by for
two days, my walk isn’t as unique as I thought it was. Guess I’ve got a new walk to work on!
There was also a roommate of sorts living in her car along
side of our yard for the first couple of days we were here with her dog on a
chain resting on our grass, but before I could learn her name or even pet her
dog, she left. Probably for the best, I don’t
think she would have liked chipping in on the rent.
4. Neighbors are
always looking for a fight. Our new
neighbors have been very, very nice and have made it clear that we can come to
them if we need anything, but just when I was starting to be very glad for
better neighbors, the unthinkable happened.
I was minding my own business on my porch when one of the neighbors
climbed up into the fort they have by the fence and took aim at me with a huge
gun he had constructed with PVC pipe at some sort of camp last summer (he had
the courtesy of telling me about the weapon he was using to shoot me). So, now, I have to shop for Super Soakers to
stash under the porch rocker just in case poop goes down in the hood.
Armed with these new insights I will continue to make my
home here in T-town. I might have to be
mindful of what I flush, or realize a creepy feeling that comes over me when I
am alone is just an old friend saying hello; I may have new friends to make and
new neighbors to dodge bullets from, but I am here and I am staying.
