The American Dream, Detroit, and The Turner House

He had set it up this way, encouraged her to stop working, practically forbade her from working. He facilitated this metamorphosis into pushy caretaker, clingy nursemaid. It had made him feel like a man, an old-fashioned, all-capable man like his father. Now he felt like a child. Trapped in the cage of condescension and coddling that he’d built for himself. -Angela Flournoy, The Turner House

Depending on where you live, if you rent your place, someone is going to ask you when you want to buy. I imagine this is similar to other questions that seem innocent enough but are loaded with discomfort, like "when are you graduating," or if you're single at a friends' wedding and someone asks when it's going to be your turn. "You guys going to have a kid or what?" You're sharing needles at the crackhouse and your buddy asks when you think you'll get H.I.V. Like, give me some time, you know? Let me live my life.

It's especially weird when you've reached one of those milestones, and then for some reason you haven't. That's weird, right? Like nobody asks. "When are you getting married again?" I don't know, man. Didn't work out for me the last time, this hypothetical person tells the other hypothetical person with boundary issues. Going to take it easy for a minute. "You going to give that college thing another go?" or "What if the cancer comes back? What then?"

That's me when it comes to home ownership. Already a loaded topic. When people ask when I plan on buying another house, I look at it differently now. I bought a house one time, and by "buy," I mean I got into a "situation" with a piece of land with a house on it. I didn't "own" the house. Not even close. I had a mortgage on a house that managed to keep being worth more or less exactly what I owed on it, regardless of improvements. Calling this ownership is like calling indentured servitude "freedom." There's some kind of liberty down the line somewhere, but at the time my freedom was as illusory as that of a dog with a shock-collar and an invisible fence.

I finished the basement, which was to me an impressive accomplishment given that the house had stood for nearly one hundred years and nobody else had managed to do it, though I assume everyone hoped to. I was like the first person to set foot on the moon after astronauts dreamed about it forever, but instead of spending years proving that I was the smartest and most capable person on earth and risking my life for human endeavor, I figured out how drywall worked.

Sort of

We put in grass and a garden in the backyard, and a fire pit. And we paid our mortgage faithfully for five years, and then my work dried up. I wasn't fired, or laid off, work just kind of stopped. I had enough to pay for food, but that mortgage thing got tricky. So I did what people do when there isn't work: I got a new job. Unfortunately, the job was over a hundred and fifty miles away. So we put the house on the market, and then the real fun began (note that this sentence is using the word "fun" ironically, as this was not fun.)

Eleven months. Eleven months I drove an hour to my parents' house, then got on a train and rode for another two hours. Then I worked. And then I rode the train (for two hours) back to my parents' house to sleep. Longtime readers of this blog know about the train, and how I wrote blogs on it. On weekends I drove home and helped keep the house spotless for showings. I mowed not just my lawn, but the neighbors' lawns on both sides, because one had moved, and the other couldn't be bothered. It was, without question, the worst year of my life.

The house was too old. It didn't have a dishwasher. The basement ceiling was too low. It was cute, but the buyers decided on a townhouse instead. The house that we loved, with the desert garden filled with native plants, and the raised garden boxes I built, and big patio where my kids drew in chalk, and the lush green yard that one summer I spread a truckload worth of soil over before planting seeds and watering them daily then playing catch on with my son almost every night, and croquet with cousins, was not what people wanted. They didn't like the neighborhood, the feedback said.

It did sell, eventually. And we're lucky for that. I know people who weren't able to sell. We weren't upside down. We didn't short sell, or walk away. We didn't have to bring money to the table. We walked away with $1,500. Thank heavens we could "borrow" money from parents to afford a first month's deposit. If we didn't have that, I don't even know, you guys.

I am very grateful. But I am not exaggerating when I say that two years later we are still rebuilding our family from that year. I gained 20 pounds. My blood pressure skyrocketed. In a regular checkup, my doctor stopped in the middle of a visit and asked how often I thought about dying, like, as an escape. I left with a prescription for antidepressants.

I liked our house, you guys, but our house was not worth it. I like my family more. Wherever my family is, that's where I want to be. If that home where my family resides, where my video game collection is, where my garden is, if that home is owned by a nice man who very quickly and cheerfully fixes plumbing problems within hours of their arising? I can deal with that. I can tell you with confidence that I can deal with that a hell of a lot more than I could when I only lived in a house I "own" 2 or 3 days a week.

So no, I don't know when we'll buy another house. I don't know when we'll be able to, honestly. Even if we wanted to. Which we do not.

A lot of us feel defined by our houses. The square footage, the neighborhood, the height and look and price. The landscaping. Our updates and remodels are sources of conversation. When it's finished, we have a party to show it off. I have to tell you that it's refreshing to not be defined by my house. I know that as a "renter," I'm defined. I'm something that is often pointed to as detrimental to a neighborhood. Everyone knows that rentals are part of the decay of a neighborhood.

But I'll be darned if I don't find it relaxing that when I pull in to the driveway I don't have to look at the exterior paint and tell myself that this weekend I have to paint. Or that the roof needs replacing. Or we should really redo the bathrooms (again). It's not my house! On the schedule this weekend? Grilling. That's what.

Speaking of grilling, while grilling lately, I've been reading The Turner House. As the title implies, it is also about a house. A house in Detroit on which $40,000 is owed, but due to a decline in Detroit's economy that you may have heard of, is now worth maybe $4,000. In this house, Francis and Viola raised 13 kids.

We learn about these kids, and their parents, as we jump back and forth between the 40's, when Francis and Viola are first married, and today, when Cha-Cha, the eldest son, struggles to save the house in which they all grew. We meet all the kids, and they are as diverse and interesting a group of human beings as I've come across in a long time.

Cha-cha, in his sixties, is haunted by a haint. But guys, you'll be super surprised to find out that not all the ghosts are literal in this family. The family is haunted by memories and actions in the past. Between husbands and wives, siblings, and neighbors. Not all haints, we find, are bad ones. We are haunted also by pleasant memories.

Norman Maclean, when finishing his novel A River Runs Through It, concludes with the line "I am haunted by waters." It's a sad story, ultimately, but also full of beauty, and humor, and love between siblings. We, too, are haunted by the funny and sad and terribly lovely. Why I just looked at my Facebook timeline during that crappy time, and I was making lots of jokes. My kids were cute. My wife was (and is) hot. And there was going to be a Veronica Mars movie. There was also this ad featuring a rube goldberg machine built by adorable little girls to the tune of a Beastie Boys song.

The Turner House is a beautiful book. And like you when you reach the end of a Howie's Book Club Dot Com blog post, I was sad when it ended.

There, there. Another one will be here next Monday.

a different kind

"Stories are a different kind of true."
-Emma Donoghue, Room

Carry On, Warrior and Guys, I'm Your Friend

The sun shows up every morning, no matter how bad you've been the night before. It shines without judgment. It never withholds. It warms the sinners, the saints, the druggies, the cheerleaders- the saved and the heathens alike. You can hide from the sun, but it wont take it personally. It´ll never, ever punish you for hiding. You can stay in the dark for years or decades, and when you finally step outside, it´ll be there. - Glennon Doyle Melton, Carry On, Warrior

A lot of the books I read are about people who can't confront their feelings. People who hide their past. People who are petty and mean. People who use their secrets and flaws and pettiness to hurt, and their strengths to heal and create. In other words, they're about people. Many of these books contain big, powerful messages, but the messages are tucked away in little puzzles that I have to tease out. The treat on the inside of a dog toy that only reveals itself after just slobbering all over it.

The best of them simply tell a story, and the story has its own truth to it, and neither the author nor the reader have to come out and say it. It's like those times when someone you know says something ridiculous and without having to say anything, you and your friend exchange just the subtlest glances that tell each other that you're on the same page. The idea that someone else is having your same thought at the same time is delicious. Like melted Cadbury Mini Eggs on a brownie.

These books are fun, and I love the puzzles, and I love the ambiguity, but sometimes it's nice to read a book that just tells you what its thinking.

Here's my hunch: nobody's secure, and nobody feels like she completely belongs. Those insecurities are just job hazards of being human. But some people dance anyway, and those people have more fun.

Glennon Doyle Melton seems incapable of not saying what she's thinking. Well, you know what? That's not fair, really. She decided at some point that she just wasn't going to put up a facade anymore. At one point she got sick of being told that her family was perfect, and guessed that "perfect" only meant being thin and wearing nice jeans. Because as a recovering alcoholic, drug addict, and bulimic, whose life felt constantly on the verge of exploding, being called perfect was unbearable. Instead she started to tell her story, giving her power over her past and power over others' expectation of perfection.

Defrosting is excruciatingly painful. You have been numb for so long. As feeling comes back to your soul, you start to tingle, and it’s uncomfortable and strange. But then the tingles start feeling like daggers. Sadness, loss, fear, anger, anxiety—all of these things that you have been numbing with the booze—you feel them for the first time. And it’s horrific at first, to tell you the damn truth. But welcoming the pain and refusing to escape from it is the only way to recovery. You can’t go around it, you can’t go over it, you have to go through it.

You know when you're 36 and still finding things out about yourself that you don't like? And you wonder if maybe this never stops. If there's never a point where you can look at yourself and forgive the stupid things you did decades ago, or even weeks ago, and realize that you were doing the best you had with the tools you had at the time?

Let's say, hypothetically, that you spend a lot of time with noisy earbuds in your ears because when it's quiet you have a hard time being alone with yourself. Or every time you're waiting for something even for 10 seconds, you stare at your phone because there will hopefully be a new article about the politician you hate and by reading it you'll be distracted from the little Inside Out feelings that are telling you all those conflicting things about how to react to the world. Or maybe, again hypothetically, you find yourself throwing your extra energies into things like volunteering and charities because you need to prove to yourself that you're good, in spite of the dumb things you've done.

I don't know, you guys. It's scary to think about. The idea of just being open about everything we have been holding on to and been so ashamed of in hopes that it might heal other people is maybe the most frightening thing I can imagine. Glennon says that people didn't judge her when she told them her story, and instead called her brave. And because she told them they were more willing to share their own. I can wrap my head around that logically, I guess, but have a hard time handling it.
Here's another thing I think about, though. If everyone is carrying around these burdens, some bigger than others, but all of them stressful and terrifying, and then we started talking about them more, maybe we'd stop hating what's in us because we'd see that everyone fights. What if we're not good in spite of the things that hold us back and actually are good because of them? Instead of asking myself what I could accomplish if it weren't for my shortcomings, I can say look at all I have accomplished while living in a reality in which life is messy and gross and potentially humiliating.

Parenting is hard. Just like lots of important jobs are hard. Why is it that the second a mother admits that it’s hard, people feel the need to suggest that maybe she’s not doing it right? Or that she certainly shouldn’t add more to her load. Maybe the fact that it’s so hard means she IS doing it right, in her own way, and she happens to be honest.

This doesn't mean I'm going to start using this blog as a confessional. Just by virtue of you showing up and reading it means I like you on some level. But guys, let's temper that a little. I don't know where you've been. The big S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier in the sky looming over this entire conversation is boundaries. The trick is to find a balance between oversharing by using the faceless hordes of internet people (though I'll admit that "hordes" is a real stretch in my case) as free therapy, and just being authentic. Unhealthy boundaries either let everyone in or nobody. The best ones give us the choice about who we let in and who we keep out.

So, what? Share, but don't share too much? Be authentic, but not too authentic, but not too not authentic? Here's my thought: let's just experiment with this on a small level. If your kid wants a dog, but you're not sure if you can handle a dog, you start small. Maybe a fish, then a hamster. Try to open up in little ways in cases where the stakes are low, to people who can just listen. If you're religious, confessing a faith crisis to your official church leader may have consequences you might not be ready to deal with. You have regular meetings, people "worry about you", they bring you cookies, it's a whole thing. But what if you talked about it with someone who you know has gone through something similar?

They won't have the cultural baggage of getting stressed out about you. They're not going to tell your mom, or your youth pastor or whatever. They know what it's like and can just listen and nod and say, "I know what you're saying." Maybe they have advice that helped them, or maybe they just quietly understand without you having to go through all of it. Someone like that would be pretty good, right?

I teach a class of 12-14 year olds for church, and we had a lesson about listening. I gave each one of them a chance to talk about their problems and all I did was listen and ask follow up questions. I could either restate what they said, paraphrase it, or identify feelings they might be having. No relating, no telling my own story, no advice. The next week, they said they wished they could have talked longer. And that they wish they had someone in their lives who would listen to them. Isn't that sad? All these brand new teenagers bursting with worry and emotions, and they don't have anyone who will just listen.

So let it be you. You're the one who can listen. Whether you've been through it (whatever "it" is) or you haven't. But if you have, and you understand, you could be the person who helps someone else in need because you've lived it yourself. If, though, you've never talked about it, and kept it all inside, and put on a facade of contentment, your friend won't ever know that you're a resource. That's kind of tragic, isn't it?

Let's go back to that fish you want to start out with before taking on a bigger pet. Fish are cool. They just listen. They chill. They're there. Be somebody's fish. When someone is in crisis the reaction of the first person they tell is a huge indicator on how they will move forward. Don't jump in their lap and lick their face and hit them with your wagging tail and say pay attention to me (this is all metaphorical, guys). Just watch and listen. Glennon knows hard stuff, and she says,“These things will be hard to do, but you can do hard things.”