The Mama Politic: I Love My Nest
This past weekend, my husband, my daughter, and I packed up our little Toyota, stuffed it full of clothes, toys, the dog, my camera, and blew out of the city. I had been ready for this for months. After nearly twenty years in one city or another, I finally feel the call back to my rural childhood. My husband and I are both from the sticks—and we escaped with our psyches barely intact. The city has been our sanctuary, our getaway car, our land of rebellion. We have reveled in it, rolled our tongues along its dark paths, loving the promises, the seediness, the call to all who have felt outcast, misunderstood.
There is a sense of relief about the anonymity and temporariness of living above, below, and beside others—those who are also sucking the marrow from the movement, the clamor, and the constant rattle and hum that is the city. When my husband and I were first together ten years ago, we would walk the through the city at night, spending hours lurking, drinking, perusing all-night bookstores, mingling with those whom we felt were like us. On our way home, we would hurdle the cement barrier of Highway 99, dodging cars in the early morning hours to get back to our apartment. I can still feel the way my thigh muscles would push me up and over, the way they stung from not enough food and sleep—the pulse and freedom, the adrenaline in those steps. Magic stars and neon lights made those nights. We trampled over yards, the world tipping, coming to rest wherever we landed, without care. Growing up, I was an awkward redheaded girl in a town of four thousand people. A conservative, desolate valley where everyone knew how much money you did (or did not) have, who your friends were and were not, and the sins you had committed since birth. I walked the town from border to border and kept scarce from certain people and their judgments. I spent much of my time alone, mostly hating my life. It did not seem to matter what anyone said or did; I could not break the spell of isolation I felt. My angst was fully in tact by age fifteen. The moment I walked down the aisle in my cap and gown, I was gone, certain I would never look back. Positive I would never end up in a house at the end of the block with a polka dot tablecloth and a napkin holder to my name. As a kid, I thought that marriage, parenting, and home life were all imposing forces. Everyone I knew seemed to be in such despair. As an adult, I have wanted to keep my options open, the door ajar, one foot off the bed. This drive to do things differently has been so imperative. I have been terrified of what lies behind closed doors. Of what I see when I pass houses in the dark in this secret, American life we live in. As I walked in all my teenager-ness by the rows of ranch houses tucked within sagebrush, I watched as families gathered around tables for dinner, dark rooms with televisions flashing, hedged-in lawns. I could not help but stop and stare, wondering if they were all miserable in their day-to-day, to-do list of living. Since then, I have rarely stayed in one place for more than a year. Our address changes with the tides. Our parents complain that as soon as they memorize an address, we have already moved. So many times, we have packed our heavy collection of books up and down wooden, carpeted, cement flights of stairs. Our New York City walk-up nearly killed us in the heat of July. I was constantly looking at apartments, rental ads beckoning to me from the newspaper. What is out there to know and experience? As we prepared to buy our house two years ago, anxiety clung to me. There is something about a house that reeks of reality, of years going by, of permanence. I was scared I would feel trapped and be tempted to plan an escape but I wanted to try to give our daughter some trees, dirt and permanence. As we drove around looking for a house in what was the only neighborhood we could afford, I had those same gut grumbling feelings I had as a kid—house after house, lawn after lawn. I watched as a teen slouched down the street hiding behind his hoodie and long hair, thumping to the beat of his chain wallet, and all I could think was how can I become the thing I thought I hated? Was it so long ago that I was the one slumping along in pain at all the settling I saw going on around me when there was so much dreaming to be done? As much as I hate to admit it sometimes, somewhere along the line my dreams changed. I seem to have lost the keys to my escape hatch. I no longer feel like I could run away in a millisecond's notice. Commitments now seem to bring me comfort, not fear. Now my dreams evolve around my paper-thin arctic poppies, my World War II-era, one stitch, heavy green, sewing machine, and the perfect, manual focus on my camera. I am building a brick path from my front fence to my porch, reworking, once again, this life, our life, motherhood. I am still awkward, but now I am a thirty-five year-old woman making a life that we all three want—my daughter, her dad, and me. I have finally stopped searching or wanting something different than what I have. I no longer need to run out alone and rework this mama gig in my mind or constantly figure out how to do it differently. Now we are working it out as a team and learning how to be our true best selves together. This past weekend away from the city, as I jumped fences in horse pastures to become one with mud and grass, my camera strapped to my hip, I realized that anyone looking out of themselves, and over at me, could see a ratty-haired, dust-covered, puddle of a woman trapped in a ring of fences in the middle of nowhere. But all I could feel was the way the sturdy muscles of my thighs still propelled me forward—toward a greener pasture, a forever-blue sky and I was free, at peace with this previously strangling entity. I had somehow crossed over to the other side. I feel like I have found my new radical self in this settling, redefining my definition of home. It is daring for me, but I finally feel like I have settled in, that I am creating my own meaning, my own world, a somewhat permanent place for my family to be. And it is okay. The other night as I lay tucked in under cat-print sheets with my five-year-old daughter, I read by request, The Best Nest "I love my house.
I love my nest.
In all the world,
my nest is best!"
I lost myself for a moment until, "Mama, keep reading," brought me back. Have I found my nest? Have I found my place here in this house, in this space that I have been reworking, digging into, shaping around us? Do I finally belong wholly with these two creatures that I share my life with? For so long, I thought I needed to hold on to my angst, coddle it, keep it close, for I was sure to need it while washing the dishes. But as I stand on the outside of my own home looking in, with its hand-me-down dining set, the radio buzzing election updates, and my flowering hydrangeas, I feel like there is a place that I finally fit, a place I truly want to be. |
Michelle Taylor
 Michelle Taylor has taught in a New York City public school, at a New York Penitentiary, and at Sarah Lawrence College. She is currently a teacher at a community school in Seattle where she has packed her daughter Autumn-Wilder around in a sling, a backpack, and upside down for the past four years. You can find her other work at Mama Out Loud and The Living Classroom. Read more of Michelle's Mama Politic column. search mamazine:
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