To Grandmother's House We Go

When my grandma sold her California house that she bought around the year I was born, I was for the first time in a place where I could emotionally let the house go. I had spent 12 years living with her on and off, the biggest stretch being between the ages of 3 and 10. I moved back from ages 17 to 21 and again at 23 a year before getting married. Throughout my life, whenever I dreamt of home it was my grandma's home, and my happiest years were spent under its roof. I married that fall ready to create my own home of memories.

Three falls later I signed final divorce papers. Turns out my husband didn't want kids like he said he did, so while we were making a home for ourselves (and our cats), it wasn't the home that I had envisioned for us. I came to realize that I used my husband as a way to create stability for myself, and a nuclear family to replace the one I only sort of had. But I wasn't in love with him -- I only wanted to create children with him. Just the two of us wasn't enough for me.

My grandma moved into a retirement home in Washington once she sold the house. As I moved between Washington, Oregon and Massachusetts, I reveled in any chance I got to visit her. Her voice, the smell of her home, the furnishings,... it all brought me back to my happy childhood and and my sense of security. A few months ago my grandma got sick with pneumonia. While recovering she moved in with my aunt, and she recently made the decision to sell her retirement home and move in with my aunt permanently. As an 81-year-old she lacks the health and mental stamina to keep living on her own, and because I'm ill myself I can't take care of her the way I'd hoped. While I know the move is necessary, to lose one's grandma's house--and to lose her role as the head of that house--is to lose something sacred. But whenever I do lose another piece of her, the universe seems to give me something to help lessen the blow.

When I first came to Washington to live with my aunt and uncle after my divorce, I got a job at the Seattle Space Needle. I fell in love with the area, especially Queen Anne Hill located right to the Northeast of the Needle. Its quiet streets looking down on the heart of the city reminded me of my old California neighborhood, and when I moved back to Washington after graduate school I knew that's where I wanted to live. Disability made me put that dream on hold and live with my best friend rent free while I'm unable to work. But disability, in the end, is going to allow my Queen Anne dream to come true.

There is a subsidized apartment complex on the top of Queen Anne, and as it is for low income residents it will only cost me $100 a month to live there -- 30% of my monthly income from the State. A recent drive to the complex proved it to be everything that I had ever hoped my Queen Anne home to be. It will take over a year for my spot on the wait list to reach the top, but the knowledge that I will have my own little "house on the hill" makes losing my grandma's house a little less hard to bear. And as I'd have to wait another year or two for another subsidized housing spot if I move in with someone else and then break up, my Queen Anne studio will be mine for a long long time.

With my health the way it is I don't long for children the way I used to. My family, my friends, and my animals make up for that loss that I used to feel. The next time I marry it will be for love and not for what I think that love will give me. And until then my slow legs will walk the streets of Queen Anne, and each piece of sidewalk will welcome me.