I left the office early to food shop and watch my daughter run track, but the truth was I had been a little fragile all day. The morning came forth fraught, the noise in my head waking me at 5 AM, pushing me to no longer delay in a phone call that needed to be made. A call that would affect people who would be part of my next change. I would sweep them up in the swirl of my growth and the end of my cycle in that call. We are always parting with something when we are committed to evolving and I have grown in my life hyper conscious of refining the method in which I decide to start a new chapter. I no longer systematically hurry or rush, but I start to circle the potential, surrender, breath and then wait until the growth itself pushes me to change.
It’s time. Let’s go.
The conversation I had was to tell my tenants I would be selling the house, a house that I took 7 years to save for, and lived in for two before they took over as tenants. They were part of this epic story of a woman who dropped a down payment on her own in the midst of a pandemic on a house in South LA. Selling the house had peppered my mind time to time over the last year, but it didn’t feel right or aligned. I was falling in love, my daughter was headed off to college, and I had bought a second home in which I currently lived. I was exploring this role as landlord, one I had never done before. I knew selling would come when I landed on firm observations of these new roles - my new life with one less kid in the house, the enjoyment of a serious relationship that checked all the boxes, and assistance in paying my mortgage from my tenants while managing to pay the higher mortgage of another house. When we grow, one place changes, and often it’s where we had the dream. The dream of home ownership had been reached and I was weary from managing the property. My mind was craving more empty spaces to linger on what the next unknown would be. I had wanted to own a house for so long, it took up a lot of space. Now I wanted that space back… to look at what I wanted that hadn’t been yet cultivated.
I was surprised by my tears when I let my tenants know I was selling. I was taken back to that day in May of 2020 when I saw the house for the first time - a robin’s egg blue, perfect, peeking out to me from the stand of fruit trees. She was perfect. She was my house. She was my magic house. In her walls I found a new sense of myself, my power, my perseverance. I learned what I loved and wanted. My dreams were set on fire in that house as I played drums in the sweltering garage, then renovated it. As I had parties, and prayed, and swore in frustration. A gun man was on the roof, a meth head was at the gate and the palm fronds landed on the roof with a defining thwack. My house held me close through the pandemic and beyond, until the commute became unbearable to my kids’ schools and I decided to rent the house to a family and move. I had prayed for people who would love the house as much as I did and they arrived in perfect timing.
But now I wanted to take all those memories, written while in residence into a memoir as I sat before the window in the living room and watched my neighbor Easy sweep the relentless pine needles from an age-old tree and the unforgiving feral cats prowl, and put them into the timeline of my life. A timeline that was advancing with exciting momentum to the next journey and challenge. The present and the future were intermingling and the noise was no longer avoidable. I would need to say goodbye to this chapter in my life because I no longer was the woman who thought she could maybe one day buy a house. I was the woman who did, and much much more, and now I was selling.
The padlocked gate. The gun I bought when I felt scared. The mechanics on the corner who taught me how to buy my own brakes at O’Reilly Auto Shop and bring them back for a cheap install. The tamales at the local supermarket, and the man who painted a chuparossa on my curb (hummingbird.) All tangibles and intangibles co-mingle to make this part of my life so profound and always with me. I move on to the next profound place, and realize, I no longer linger.
I will be leaving behind whispers in the night, tears, laughter, astrology readings and New Years fireworks that paled in comparison to the barrage of fireworks on 4th of July. A community I called home, with my family, and I made a foundation for me to build on myself. What was once built on the frailty of possibility was now an empire from which I could catapult into the lesson that more is not always the best. We get to shed, and par down to understand the precious value of what remains and what calls to be seen.
I allowed myself to understand that a lot of changes had been afoot this week, on top of the decision to sell and tell the tenants. I had been restructuring my company, and healing a rift with my older daughter. I was exploring more time to be a writer, and looking at international travel. I was untethering from a cycle of change that was ending, and honoring its value.
A new cycle was coming, and I was more than ready.
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