I learned the meaning of the word “community” at an early age, but it has changed for me through the years.
As a kid, community meant the people who borrowed your trailer but also helped you castrate your calves. The people who invited you to their catfish fry and ask you to care for their dogs when they need it. They borrow your trailer, and they pick guitar with you into the night.
“Put a pot of coffee on, because So-and-So is coming,” meant community.
Community was also the Big Table at the coffee shop, where the farmers and ranchers would gather to talk about the weather, the price of calves, politics, trucks, local sports, and everything else that mattered. (My grandma called the Big Table in Small Town my grandpa’s “office”—if someone called and he was at the Circle M, he was “at his office.”)
I gained friends when I found speech and debate in junior high and high school. They became the first real community of my own. We laughed together, shared in-jokes, and gloried in each other’s triumphs. We shared meals—the bad ones that high schoolers enjoy.
This wasn’t a community of proximity. We didn’t attend the same schools. We connected over shared interests and abilities.
Over the years, I moved many times. Counted up, including college relocations, I had eight cross-country moves and five moves within towns. My best friend (and official U-haul driver) has declared that he has limited me to “one cross-country move per decade” at this point. He moved me from Missouri to California. Colorado to Kentucky. Kentucky to Missouri.
And last month I bought a house in Real Town.
Maybe I won’t need to call in that favor for a while.
One of my favorite movies—one my Dad showed me at probably much too early an age—is a bawdy musical western called Paint Your Wagon. At one point, two men in a mining town are discussing the fate of their changing boom town. The mayor says to the miner, “I guess there’s two kinds of people in the world: those that go and those that stay. Ain’t that true?” And the miner responds, “That ain’t true. There’s two kinds of people alright. Them going somewhere, and them going nowhere.”
Maybe both men were right—the world can be divided in many ways, after all.
I always described myself as the kind of person who moved not the kind of person who stayed. I took after my Dad. There must have been a mischievous wind blowing the day he was born, because he had itchy feet most of his life.
I think maybe my Dad and I moved so much because we never really knew where we were going either.
Coming home meant more than being ready. It meant more than facing ghosts or reliving past memories. It meant connecting with what was good, letting go of what was bad, and acknowledging that I could live my life on my own terms. I wanted to be here and to make a life for myself.
I wanted that life to be a home.
The house I bought is beautiful, at least in my eyes. It sat on the market empty for half a year, its charm and beauty waiting for me. It’s Victorian, built in 1890—old fashioned in all the right ways with big, tall bay windows in several rooms, a wooden banister railing rising out of a charming dining room, and a basement reminiscent of Silence of the Lambs. It also has plenty of remodeling that makes it feel modern and cute, without being glamorous or luxurious. It is quirky and required repair to be made fit for company again.
Maybe I loved the house because it is me.
This house has a lot of space—it’s bigger than places I have lived before. But, as my dear local friend has pointed out, it has lots of windows and windows are tricky.
Where there are windows, you lose wall space to set furniture and things, unless you are willing to block the windows and the light they let in. And I don’t want to block the light.
I am at a point where I want as much light in my life as possible. That means bringing less. Having less. Being more sparing in what I think is worth the weight. I am resistant to bringing as many of my belongings, and that means that possessions quickly become merely stuff.
And I don’t want to be hemmed in by stuff. I want light in my life. I would rather have a space that feels good to invite in my neighbors and friends, those I love. I want a warm and living home, not a museum to lives I no longer lead.
And there is so much light. There is so much space in this place, in this life, for those who have stepped up over the past weeks.
A dear friend and her father helped me move furniture patiently over a week, using a small trailer and our combined brute force. Her father seems hellbent on slow improvements to my home—pouring buckets of dirt into the uneven holes in my backyard. Plumbing up the handrail. Painting this. Squaring that. The kinds of things a dad notices and cannot tolerate being out of order.
My friend comes over nearly daily for tea or a snack—or teases me that she will. But her regular visits keep me from feeling lonely. They keep me cooking (and therefore eating) when I am busy arranging my house so furiously, I forget to feed myself.
My gentleman and an airman I know from my local LGBTQ+ group moved other pieces into the house, including moving the mattress up the stairway in defiance of both its size and shape. The airman—she carried boxes by the twos that the rest of us dreaded in singles.
My gentleman patiently and with great diligence puts furniture together from boxes, without the usual masculine cussing and fussing. In quiet moments, when others rest, he settles into corners and works from the manual until I have to turn on the light behind him as the sun has set on his labor.
My mother continues to bring loads of boxes near daily. She gifted me a plant for my kitchen, promising the vining leaves that she will keep an eye on it, and not let my black thumb do it in. “I’ll visit,” she murmured, touching its leaves. “Don’t worry.” It sits in my deep blue and black marble kitchen, cheerful and confident now.
My neighbors’ lawn crew moved in the couch when we simply couldn’t, levitating it lightly and placing it in the living room. They also moved the rest of my furniture up the stairs and have become my lawn guys—they are, like a tenth of my county, Spanish-speaking immigrants. Their friendliness has been a true joy. They share freely about their lives and generously with their time. “Congratulations,” I get to say. Because I know that the man who owns the company has just had his first baby. I know who prefers remodeling and who enjoys the mowing more.
My new neighbors are welcoming me to the neighborhood by hosting my housewarming. So far, I have been invited over for bourbon and cigars in the evening and offered wonderful hospitality. They are already scheming about Halloween costumes, which certainly makes me feel at home.
Meanwhile, my priest is preparing to perform a house blessing and even one of the most conservative members of my church is delighted to show up for me and assist.
This is a honeymoon, and I know this. Community is about more than sharing joy. It always is. Someone will get sick. Someone will get mad. Someone will need something hard. Someone will die.
And those times will test and strain and even break the joy I feel today. But I’ve got the coffee pot on for my neighbors now. I’m resting and reflecting.
I’m not moving right now. I’m going somewhere.
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