her look even less like a carpenter than I did), and the little boy was too short and small to do much other than keep the plywood from flipping backward. The guy above made an audible grunt as he pulled the plywood up from below.
“You want help?” I yelled.
They all turned around and looked at me, and instantly the guy said yes and his wife said, “No, we’re fine.”
I walked over anyway and spent the next hour lifting plywood, helping to stack it on the second floor, and leaning back to drink iced tea while I swatted the flies out of my face. They were building their own house—the three of them, but mostly the guy who reminded me a lot of my dad in his younger years: long sideburns under blond-red hair, a white T-shirt tucked intohis jeans, and sweat soaking his back and chest like he’d gone swimming when we weren’t looking.
“I’m building a house too,” I offered. “Smaller than this but, y’know, with plywood and stuff.”
And just like that, presto chango: It became real. I was going to build my house no matter what.
Anthropology 101
N ow that I had my trailer on order, I needed to fully flesh out the design. I took the plans that Jay had sent me and manipulated them, switching the location of the kitchen and bathroom, the sleeping loft and living room; envisioning what it would feel like to wake up in a space the size of my backcountry tent and which direction I would face while sitting in repose on the toilet. I wanted to design the house around my body and my needs, instead of following the pattern that I’d fallen into in my big house: picking paint colors and finishing the woodwork with some future owner and salability in mind. This was going to be
my
house.
I started examining the way I draped clothes over the chair in my bedroom as I undressed at night, and how I automatically reached for the light switch just below shoulder height onthe right, no matter what room or building I entered. I noticed how much space I needed to chop an onion or make a peanut butter sandwich, the height of my existing kitchen counters, the cabinets and chairs. I measured the height of the toilet, the depth of my closet, and the amount of room my torso consumed when I sat up in bed. I felt like Jane Goodall, observing my behavior and wondering at the mystery of why I always brushed my teeth starting with my right bottom molars, why I always double-checked that the coffeepot was unplugged before I left for work in the morning, and why I always leaned forward with my left ear cocked when trying to define the odd sounds that I heard outside the window late at night.
The more I took note of how my body and brain clicked along through the day, the more I realized that I spent a considerable amount of time banging around with a brain full of chatter; a rush of things to do, bills to pay, telephone calls, text messages, e-mails, worrying about my job or my looks, my boobs or my ass; I rushed from thing to thing, multitasking, triple-timing, hoping to cover all the bases, avoiding anything that might disrupt the schedule or routine. At times, I was so caught up in the tempo and pattern, the predictable
tap, tap, tap
of each day, that there was no time to notice the neighbors had moved out, the wind was sneaking in from the north, the sun was shifting on its axis, and tonight the moon would look like the milky residue floating inside an enormous cereal bowl. I wondered when I had become a person who noticed solittle. I had no idea that the distance from the floor to the top of my knee was twenty-four inches, which seemed to explain why I was always popping it on my car bumper.
Things had changed for me after I landed in the hospital. I truly seemed to be seeing the world in a new way, but I still needed to challenge myself to try to tune in, to notice the connections between what things were (the toilet paper holder, light switch, doorknob) and how they were connected to me, so suddenly I understood how the height of
“You want help?” I yelled.
They all turned around and looked at me, and instantly the guy said yes and his wife said, “No, we’re fine.”
I walked over anyway and spent the next hour lifting plywood, helping to stack it on the second floor, and leaning back to drink iced tea while I swatted the flies out of my face. They were building their own house—the three of them, but mostly the guy who reminded me a lot of my dad in his younger years: long sideburns under blond-red hair, a white T-shirt tucked intohis jeans, and sweat soaking his back and chest like he’d gone swimming when we weren’t looking.
“I’m building a house too,” I offered. “Smaller than this but, y’know, with plywood and stuff.”
And just like that, presto chango: It became real. I was going to build my house no matter what.
Anthropology 101
N ow that I had my trailer on order, I needed to fully flesh out the design. I took the plans that Jay had sent me and manipulated them, switching the location of the kitchen and bathroom, the sleeping loft and living room; envisioning what it would feel like to wake up in a space the size of my backcountry tent and which direction I would face while sitting in repose on the toilet. I wanted to design the house around my body and my needs, instead of following the pattern that I’d fallen into in my big house: picking paint colors and finishing the woodwork with some future owner and salability in mind. This was going to be
my
house.
I started examining the way I draped clothes over the chair in my bedroom as I undressed at night, and how I automatically reached for the light switch just below shoulder height onthe right, no matter what room or building I entered. I noticed how much space I needed to chop an onion or make a peanut butter sandwich, the height of my existing kitchen counters, the cabinets and chairs. I measured the height of the toilet, the depth of my closet, and the amount of room my torso consumed when I sat up in bed. I felt like Jane Goodall, observing my behavior and wondering at the mystery of why I always brushed my teeth starting with my right bottom molars, why I always double-checked that the coffeepot was unplugged before I left for work in the morning, and why I always leaned forward with my left ear cocked when trying to define the odd sounds that I heard outside the window late at night.
The more I took note of how my body and brain clicked along through the day, the more I realized that I spent a considerable amount of time banging around with a brain full of chatter; a rush of things to do, bills to pay, telephone calls, text messages, e-mails, worrying about my job or my looks, my boobs or my ass; I rushed from thing to thing, multitasking, triple-timing, hoping to cover all the bases, avoiding anything that might disrupt the schedule or routine. At times, I was so caught up in the tempo and pattern, the predictable
tap, tap, tap
of each day, that there was no time to notice the neighbors had moved out, the wind was sneaking in from the north, the sun was shifting on its axis, and tonight the moon would look like the milky residue floating inside an enormous cereal bowl. I wondered when I had become a person who noticed solittle. I had no idea that the distance from the floor to the top of my knee was twenty-four inches, which seemed to explain why I was always popping it on my car bumper.
Things had changed for me after I landed in the hospital. I truly seemed to be seeing the world in a new way, but I still needed to challenge myself to try to tune in, to notice the connections between what things were (the toilet paper holder, light switch, doorknob) and how they were connected to me, so suddenly I understood how the height of
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