Flash Memoir: Demo Day!

I'm scared. Me too. We can do this.

Welcome to another installment of Loss and Finding Home, a real-time flash memoir of the complete gut and remodel of our 1950s California ranch-style home. Answering the questions: What does it mean to be home? Who makes up a home? How do you build a home when there is always someone missing from the dinner table?

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Previously on… Loss and Finding Home, I told you about a painting party and how I gave the kids a few cans of spray paint and let them run wild. It was our way of saying, “The Hendersons were here.” This week is all about Demo Day!

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Quick note: Substack is a place for words, but this is also a visual story. I’ve decided to share a few images I think will enhance the narrative, but if you want more, follow me on Instagram. 

This week, we went from a house to a pile of sticks to gone. It’s taken me a bit to get this piece together, and I apologize for not publishing last week. My absence was partly because when you have school-aged kids, October is a crazy month and partly because I wasn’t sure what I was trying to say with this bit of flash memoir. 

Did I want to spin a tale about how my home was reduced to a pile of rubble and then, a few days later, swept away and how that’s a perfect metaphor for what it feels like inside my brain these days? I alternate between rubble and a blank slate, between high stress and completely zoned out, usually depending on how much sleep I got the night before.  

Did I want to tell you how this process feels like we’re monkeys in a jungle swinging from branch to branch? Nick says we’re at the “point of no return,” and I wonder, What if we just let go of one branch only to find there are no branches left to grab?

Or, did I want to tell you a story about the dog who taught me how to be a good mom?

In the end, I chose to share a marriage story. I hope you like it

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Last week, I held Tatum in the backyard while Nick and I watched an excavator move piles of splintered wood into a dumpster. Another man with a hard hat hacked away at the plaster on the few remaining walls. The painted brick fireplace was the only recognizable structure left. Tatum pressed her face into my shoulder each time there was an unexpected noise. 

“What did we do?” I asked. I was joking, but also not.

“I blame you,” he said. 

“This feels like when we brought home Olive,” and we both smiled. 

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In 2010, Nick and I got ourselves a puppy we named Olive for Christmas. I was also six months pregnant with our first child. These two sentences together pretty much explain how Nick and I move through life. Whether it's buying a house, going to graduate school, or having another baby, “What’s one more thing?” is practically a family motto. 

“I blame you,” Nick says every time we take on something that’s just outside our comfort zone. It’s a fair statement.  Maybe it’s because I’m the baby of the family that I tend to believe everything will work out. Don’t get me wrong, I often imagine the worst-case scenario. I blame myself for everything that goes wrong, and I’m a champion overthinker, but in general, I am the dreamer, and Nick is the pragmatist. I’m usually the one who leaps without looking, and he’s usually the one shaking his head when we come face to face with our new reality. Humor and levity get us through. 

Back in Christmas of 2010, Olive sat between my feet in the front seat of the car. She looked up at me with her big, soulful brown eyes, and I pressed her wrinkled face into my round belly. 

“What the f*** are we doing?” I asked Nick. 

“We just took her away from her family, and now we are her family.” He said. 

“It’s weird, right?” 

We didn’t want to take her back. We didn’t regret the decision, but all of a sudden, I realized the awesome responsibility of being the sole provider of food, shelter, safety, and love. Behind that was the fear that we might not be up for the job of caring for a puppy… or for a baby.

We just need to love her, I thought. 

I pulled Olive in closer and felt better. Something about voicing uncertainty to Nick and having him reflect it back to me took the charge out of my fear. 

ME: “I’m scared.”

HIM: “Me too.” 

US: “We can do this.”

We bought this house when Owen, our oldest, was six months old. If you’re counting, that’s a puppy, a baby, and our first house, all within a year. Like I said, “What’s one more thing?”

The original house had what’s called a “granny unit,” a 450 sq foot, one-bedroom cottage. It was about eight feet off the main house but shared a roof.  There was a full-sized bedroom and bathroom, a small living area, and an even smaller kitchen. We all squeezed into that space for the first few months while we had some minor renovations done to the main house. 

Owen had been sleeping well in his own room before we moved in, but now that all of us, including the puppy, were in the same room, he was up every hour. I was convinced he could smell me. One morning, I sat bewildered on the edge of the couch. “This isn’t healthy,” I said. I would have cried, but I didn’t have the energy. That night, we moved Olive’s crate and the mattress from our bed into the living room, and Owen took the bedroom for himself. We all slept better after that. 

For the next several weeks, we settled into a routine. After dinner, Nick went to work in the main house, and after the baby was asleep, Olive and I joined him. 

Olive was a pretty lazy dog, an Old English Bulldoggie (half English Buldogg, quarter mastiff, quarter boxer), but in the evenings, she went nuts. We had the carpet covered in plastic while we re-finished the drywall and painted. I think she liked the sound or how her claws gripped the plastic because she tore around the house like she stole something. We called it “crazy puppy time.”  

Sometimes, I walked around that empty house, marveling at our luck to own a home in Santa Barbara, a notoriously expensive place to live. The house was simple and dated, but it was ours, and it was fun to work on a project like this with Nick and confirm that we made a pretty good team. 

When we were tired enough, the three of us made our way back to the granny unit. We pulled the mattress down from where it was propped up on the wall during the day. Olive lay in the middle of the mattress like a toddler trying to extend bedtime while I pulled the fitted sheet over the corners. Nick called her to go outside one more time and then walked her into her crate.

I loved falling asleep to the sound of the two of them breathing. I didn’t mind when Owen woke us up a few hours later because, once I fed him and got him back into his crib, I got to fall asleep to that sound again. 

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I’m resisting telling you the whole story of our sweet Olive girl, but I promised a marriage story, so Olive will have to wait. 

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The morning of Demo Day, I showed up at the job site (I can’t call it a house anymore), and I saw Nick before he saw me. He and the contactor were bantering back and forth, and Nick was smiling in a way I don't get to see often. My first thought was, “He’s excited.” Nick has a big job, and he works hard. At the start of his career, he worked for different contractors and built some truly beautiful homes, but it's been a long time since he swung a hammer, and I wonder if he missed it.  

I caught Nick's eye, and he yelled out to the guys to stop so I could walk back to join him. “Give me that baby,” he said as he reached for Tatum. He looked down at my feet and shook his head, and I shrugged my shoulders. I was wearing slippers. 

Nick and I have talked about remodeling this house since we bought it. We dreamed of knocking down walls and replacing the carpet with wood. Nick looked like he smelled something every time he talked about the cheap vinyl windows, but for years, it was all talk. And then, one day, we were sitting in our dining room across the table from the architect, looking at plans, and it was real.

When she left, I asked, “Are we really doing this?” 

“It will be fun to build a house with you,” Nick said.

I just need to love him. I thought.  

I’m scared, me too, we can do this. 

This is where I am today. Thank you for listening.

Emily

Coming up: I’m finally going to share the one about a 6-foot-tall mermaid and the “in-between place.”