All Moved In

Hello again, my friend. I know it has been a little minute since I last said I’d keep in touch. But a lot has happened between now and then.

Many things. I have relocated my life to live in a trailer park in Tooele. And I have officially landed in a tiny home!

The weekend of setting things up was so busy to say the very least. When moving in to a traditional home, it seems there is always that space where you can put all the boxes and gradually move the contents to where they need to go before throwing away the boxes. In a tiny house, that space doesn’t exist. It seems I just moved a big pile of clutter all around my house the entire weekend until everything gradually fell into place. It was kinda like working a sieve. And I’m not gonna lie, Friday night the tiny home and I got in a fight.

This space is so fascinating to me. Playing the flute is REALLY LOUD, and the laundry machine shakes the whole place when it’s on the spin cycle. I have different appliances that may or may not have been installed right (like the convection fan in my oven that doesn’t seem to move, or the porch light that turns on most of the time). And yet, despite—or maybe because of—all the fun nuances of this place, it is wonderful to be here.

And my boys were with me that first weekend. They were excited by the newness of the place, and it was like even the kitchen sink was a new gadget to tinker with. They slept on their floor beds all throughout the nights, even despite the tropical storm that came whipping through, and the very loud train that blasts its presence as loudly as possible when it passes by the railroad crossing just outside the trailer court. It happens several times a day. Is this annoying? Surprisingly not. My previous residence was in Syracuse where we were near Hill Air Force Base. The jets were so loud you couldn’t talk over them. So it seems I’ve just traded one overpowering noise for a different one.

However, now is the second weekend, and it’s already starting differently. We arrived at the tiny house in time to have a bath and watch an episode of America’s Funniest Home Videos before climbing up to the boys’ loft to go to bed. And I received a certain awakening.

You see, my dear reader, my boys are not hysterical children when it comes to showing emotions. I’m looking forward to you meeting them some day. They are capable of crying, but they don’t pitch fits and throw tantrums. So when all three of them wanted to be with their mother instead of me, and they said it as clearly as I’m telling you now, I was not able to explain away the hard emotions due to “being too tired,” or “having a busy day.” I have no doubt they were grateful to see me and spend the weekend with me, but their entire support system has changed. These children are used to having two parents, and there was a great sense of loss to have just me. I felt it too.

This happened, but a very different night just earlier this week also happened, and I mention it right after this sad night on purpose. I was doing dishes alone—it was a week day so the boys weren’t here—and suddenly all the colors in the house softened to gray and pink. I looked around and realized the sun was setting behind the Stansbury mountains, and the light was shining through my three high windows and splashing on the far wall of my loft. So I did what any sane person would do. I grabbed my bag of peanut butter M&M’s and climbed the stairs to my loft and sat on the top step. I had a perfect view! My tiny house happens to be taller than all the dwellings around me by about 10 feet. I was able to see completely unobstructed the golds and oranges, purples and grays, and all the other colors of sunlight as that big ball of fire sank out of sight. It was beautiful, my friend. And that top step quickly became the best seat in the house.

I could also see the trailer park.

So I had one of those moments. Y’know, those moments during a completely normal event in a normal circumstance where you step back and decide to have the universe teach you something? For me, it is so easy to force a little positive thinking and say, “Ignore the trailer park and see the sunset.” It’s also easy to let my pessimism get the best of me and say “Do you see all these run-down trailers? Nothing can be beautiful if these are in the picture.” WAY judge-y, I know. And that’s not fair.

The thing is, the sunset was happening and the trailer park was a part of that. I was in my tiny house at that moment. It was unfair and unrealistic to consider parts of the scenery and ignore the others. It was all ugly, or it was all beautiful. If I was ready for it and open to it, I had a chance to come up with a new definition of what was beautiful.

As my children discovered during their sad moment away from their mother, sometimes it is best to take a breath and get some rest so the bad things in life can lose their badness and I can see them through a healthier perspective.

I hope you see what I mean.

Warmly,

D