Playing House

Whether it was gender normalization or growing up in a comparatively happy domestic environment, I am drawn to the idea of home. There are a million more reasons too, no doubt: fleeting glimpses of Extreme Make-Over: Home Edition, the possibility that Mah-thah is a voo-doo priestess capable of brainwashing even the low-maintenance woman with visions of flowers, food, and pristine order. Or it could even be... age.

Whatever it is, nature or nation, I am suffering from nomadic fustration, the malaise of a late-stage gen X-er with no cash, little savings, and a liberal amount of student loan debt. From dorm, to house-sitting, to rental, my life has a fluid quality that would make the international credit market weep tears of unrestrained envy. At any rate, here I am, wishing I had something to foreclose on! Oh to have a home.

I live in a house, of course. There is a photo of it on the sidebar. Obligingly, the house becomes increasingly more finished and more pleasant with time. The homeowner is an absentee professor- a summer person who uses the house a few weeks a year. I was welcome, indeed encouraged, to stay through his visit last summer, and did manage to survive the deluge of daughters, dogs, and kittens. My main task was to help keep an eye on the kids, keep him company (let him talk at me to his heart's content), do some cooking, advise about kitten care, and pick out the soft goods for the house.
At dinner on the second night, his eight year old asked if he would marry me. He seemed tempted, and over dishes started joining our names out loud.

I spent much of my remaining time very busy away from the house.

And now it is autumn, and I have cut off what prospect I did have that might, at some point, have led to marriage, a home, a partnership. And I proceeded to nestle into this house, rearranging furniture, cleaning the refrigerator, creating a comfortable order. And at long last, I got my cat back from her sitter (the dogs had chased her away).

The peace was glorious. For a week. Possibly less.

The homier the house becomes the more I feel like a little lost echo bouncing off its walls. I restocked the fridge, I regained my interest in cooking, but coming home to the house is so very very quiet. Except for the thoughts- wouldn't it be nice to have someone to cook with? To say or to hear "so how was your day?" Oddest of all, wouldn't it be nice if someone was actually someones, and perhaps if some of those someones were children?

And so it is that I find myself issuing the socially awkward dinner invitations- so I can have someone in my kitchen to talk to while I make dinner; to ask "how was your day"; to pretend this house needs the three bedrooms and three baths. Of course, lest the universe miss the opportunity to provide contrast, my dinner guest is the exact opposite of the professor- he is not worldly, or highly educated; he is younger than I am, as quiet and shy as the professor is chatty and outgoing. I feel the sad desperate one, and I know each situation is as false as the toy appliances I got for Christmas when I was nine.

Tonight, I am back in the middle ground: myself, my cat, my laptop and tea tray, sequestered in my office, the only room conforming to a single woman's scale.