I can't believe I didn't google this man before I went to his house. My new landlord is quite the character.
Last week I started looking for an apartment in the general vicinity of where I work. I have a 2-3 hour commute on Monday to get to the worksite, I stay in a hotel, I am given a per diem, and then I usually drive back on Thursday which is another 2-3 hours (sometimes more depending on DC traffic). At the end of June 2010 I moved out of the house in DC and back into my mom's basement. The advice I was given at the time was to figure out what the job was going to be like, figure out more about the area, get more comfortable with this new role in my life. In the meantime, have this glorified storage situation in mom's basement. The other option that was rolling around was moving to Philadelphia. Most people asked why I wouldn't think to move to Delaware and I said because it's Dela-where? There were beautiful loft apartments east of the projects in North Philly and I wanted one. Saner heads prevailed because I wanted to start paying off my student loans and figured that Philadelphia was too expensive (why, yes, I did do a cost-benefit analysis). My god-father used to live in Delaware and he suggested I look into Newark. I scoffed.
Fast forward three months. I haven't slept in the same bed for more than four days in a row since May. I live in a hotel. I am homeless. It was very exciting in the beginning, but there was one night when I was going to sleep and realized that the hotel bed had become familiar. A bed without my scent felt normal. This is not normal. I nest. I create homes. I make do with what I have and can turn any situation into a nest of some sort. But it is completely unacceptable for a hotel to feel like a home. I am not Eloise. I cram my weekend with seeing friends in DC and working on the 30x30 list so that I am not static enough to feel like I don't have an anchor. This has exhausted me.
I can't live with my mom forever. Originally, we estimated that I would stay at the house until the end of October. I never unpacked my books or my quilts or my yarn. I unpacked my clothes and enough to keep me busy on the weekends. Art supplies are still neatly tucked away. All the knick knacks that I have collected over the years are still in their newspaper. None of the pictures of my family are on display.
Worried that some of the desire to find a new place was the result of a non-smoker mood-swing, I started looking for apartments. Last week during lunch I dragged my co-worker to an apartment building downtown in an old historic building. The apartment was too expensive, but it started the ball rolling. The idea of moving north to Delaware became something that could be entertained, although I still laughed at myself for thinking that I would be content living in a city so much smaller than my hometown. Combing through only two days worth of craig’s list posts I saw an apartment building online and without even going to the site, applied for the apartment. Monday, I drove to the building and walked around the outside and scoped out the neighborhood. There was a yoga studio down the street, an old-folks home across the street, and the cvs where I have been getting my rx filled for the past two months is four blocks south. There's a YMCA, hopefully with a pool. Maybe I can learn how to play racquetball. As I was standing on the sidewalk I thought to myself that when I find a place of my own that I really want to get a virgin mary bird bath.
I made an appointment to see the apartment and that was the first time I talked to George, who may be the most inviting and open man I have ever met. He just wants to share everything. He told me all about the neighborhood. He took me in to see the apartment and on the windowsill in the kitchen was a virgin mary statue. I felt like it was a sign. There are three walk-in closets, the original medicine cabinets, high ceilings, huge space. I told him I wanted to think it over but that I would get back to him by the afternoon or the next morning.
After posting a picture of the statue on facebook and text messaging my most downest homies, it became clear that I could move to this apartment. I called him up and he said, can you come by at 6pm to sign the lease. I said sure, knowing I had plenty of time to sign a lease before going to the Philly airport to pick up my co-worker.
I went to a strangers house. It's this huge brick building built in the 1920s by the Dupont company for the on-call doctor (before there were cell phones, people lived close to one another so they could communicate. crazy, right?). It looked like a museum inside, with masks from South East Asia, a divan and trunk from the same region. Japanese war-horse sculptures, fucking palm trees. There was new age jazz playing in the background. At first I thought he and his son had bought the house to make it into an office, not so uncommon. I asked if it was his office, he said no. My next thought was that the man was a black-market importer of antiquities and that no one knew where I was and that I was in a stranger's house. What also crossed my mind, is that I am a stranger to him, and how easy it could be to profit from stealing from a thief.
While he answered a phone call, I dug around for my phone in the fucking Mary Poppins of a Marc Jacobs bag, to no avail. I needed to post on facebook the address of my last known location. My mom would be so pissed if I didn't leave a trail for her to follow. He told me he wanted to show me the basement, but before that, we should share a drink. Thanks but I don't drink alcohol or sugar in general, kinda weird, I know. OKay can I get you water. Yes, water would be wonderful, thank you.
So he takes a glass and fills it with water from a source which I cannot see because the refrigerator door is in the way. How awkward can you get, in a strange old man's house, convinced he's trying to slip you a roofie so that he can take you into the basement ... I was very awkward. I didn't want to take off my jacket, I saw the lease on the kitchen counter and I just wanted to do that part. I drank the water, my eyes as big as saucers, waiting for the drop. He told me because I was interested in the virgin mary statue that I would really like what he had in his study. I expected to lose consciousness while climbing the stairs, but I didn't. In his study, there was an oil painting of his wife above his chair. He told me that he was in the middle of painting the picture while in south america, when his wife called from the states to tell him that she was in labor with their daughter. He left the painting as it was and flew to the states, where his wife labored for 48 hours. He had the wedding wreath from his marriage in a glass case opposite her portrait. I saw eviction notices on his desk upstairs. He had an entire bay window sill filled with family photos. I finally relaxed a bit.
Then he wanted to take me to the attic... and I followed him. Upstairs was an entire room that smelled like an anthropological exhibit. It was fantastic and amazing and unbelievable. African warrior statues, masks, pipes, head-dresses, musical instruments, spears, knives, a birthing chair and a headrest/pillow sculpture. He told me a story for each and every one. We looked through picture books of Africa. He used words like "genitalia" for describing some of the pictures (as well as some of the parts of the statues). Fucking surreal, that this man opened up his house and wanted to tell me stories for an hour.
After the attic I realized that my coworker was going to be waiting at the airport if I didn't do what I came to do quickly. George's son is in law school at the moment and no doubt downloaded the rental agreement off of a clearinghouse and filled in the blanks. His father is so proud of him though. I suggested that we use the version his son gave him because it would make the son feel like his schooling was being put to good use. We signed everything, but George doesn't really know what an electronic fund transfer is all about, so I tried to explain it to him. Not very effectively. I ran out of the house forgetting a copy of the lease and without keys.
This weekend I went to a pick your own farm with my buddy cara. We picked apples and climbed trees, and swatted at flies, and smelled rotten apples, and went antiquing beforehand (which is where I bought some pie pans and a very awesome cat apron). I bought a pumpkin without thinking ahead. I don't have a home, no where to put a jack-o-lantern. So the first place I went this afternoon after picking up the keys and a copy of the lease was to the apartment. I put the pumpkin next to the virgin mary statue and got a little weepy.
I also found treasures all over the apartment: a toaster oven from the 1960s. Cleaning supplies, cooking utensils, soap in the shower. Also, this weekend after the apple picking, Cara and I set to make apple desserts with the crop we picked. I made an apple pie. My very first pie, totally from scratch, no sugar, whole-wheat flour; and I cut bars and stars into the top crust. When I took this pie to my tuesday group (so I could impress someone, although thinking about it a little more, it was quite a gamble... it was the first pie I made ever. It could have bombed horribly, he said it tasted divine, like Fall spit into his mouth.). I asked everyone what they thought about this pie and was told to make it a little sweeter, that it needed ice-cream, and then a small little man with a gray beard and very short shorts told me that I should use a mandolin to cut the apples, that it makes them cook more evenly and easily. Wouldn't you know that one of the treasures I found in the new apartment is in fact a mandolin.
So there you have it. I have set the wheels in motion to move out of my mom's house and try a new adventure. The movers come next Monday. Won't lie. I'm really nervous about this decision. It feels like that scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade when Dr. Jones has passed through the first two tests successfully and has walked out to the chasm. It's that step into the air, even though he's already thrown down sand to show the way, that still takes a mite of courage.
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