On First Landing: Words Within A Dream

Landing in Sonoma County on September 22, 2022 was the result of a well-thought-out plan to relocate from Washington to California. Except that it took place several months earlier than originally conceived. All moves and life transitions have their imperfect moments and hiccups. I, for one, will embrace my reassurances from friends and writing and dreams or other subtle signs that all will be well. 

Photo by Henry Be on Unsplash

At the time of my landing, I was enrolled in an eight week writing journey with an online group exploring the meaning of road trips and the development of our individual sense of self. The following poem emerged during the five-week housesitting assignment that made my transition to the County more personal and doable on such a short transition schedule. I am particularly indebted to Robert Crane and Obe Lynde for entrusting their home, pets, and gardens to my care while they railed by train for a much anticipated post-Covid journey. They warmly welcomed me to the area and were sensitive to the stresses of my transition and the subsequent death of one of my siblings while I was there. The poem below is dedicated to them.

Good to Know

I awoke before dawn

Hearing words within a dream:

“Good to know.”

 

Feeling welcomed

In a new bed in a new space

Among new friends

 

I’m having a

House sit, pet sit,

Garden sit moment

 

A writer’s road trip

Recalls yesterdays lived.

Of hugs and hellos,

 

Of tears and goodbyes,

I cannot lie ---

It’s difficult to trust this.

 

For some weeks hence

I am the writer, sitter,

Explorer woman

 

Uncertainties

permeate this landing

In Northern California

 

Sonoma County’s

Golden hills, her

shrinking woodlands

 

Pluck a dusty cobweb strand

In my mind. I’m resonating

with unfinished, broken dreams

 

Of another coastline,  

Of clinging Cormorants’ nests,

Of blue herons beneath golden eagle skies.

 

The inland canyons,

Once softly treaded by cougars,

Bobcats, the odd black bear, who

 

Sniffing the air

Not far from my garden beds

nestled in an old orchard

 

Where my babies once played,

Their clean diapers hung, swaying

White flags on make-shift lines

 

Strung between the crooked arms

Of apple trees, encircled by

Sentinels of plum, apricot, and tall grasses.

 

It was those trees, those trees

who listened; my prayer-poems uttered, 

almost inaudible, through five seasons.

 

From barely budding

to full blossom, from fruiting

to harvest, from pruning to rest.

 

Matching the sequence

of my body’s last gift there,

a fourth child.

 

A ginger daughter

Who is now becoming

Her true adult self

 

As are her siblings ---

The first fruits of a

now empty womb.

 

I gladly carried

Their spirits within

Celebrating all life.

 

My lacy stretchmarks

Are marvelous proof

Of my fruit bearing seasons,

 

Seasons lived in hope

But never quite certain

Of my harvest or my home.

 

A third career is opening here,

In a land before time, unknown

but not unknowable.

 

By intuition and grace

I packed and stored

My tiny household.

 

I live today

On decisions of yesterday

And hopes for tomorrow,

 

Now destined to unfurl

on the curve of love

and kindnesses lived.

 

A long-term home

Is in the air

I can feel it

 

We haven’t landed

At the same time

And place but we will.

 

My library will be

Re-shelved; my bed unwrapped,

Strategically placed

 

To cradle my body,

And this purposeful

Wanderer’s heart.

 

I see another garden

Another orchard, reaching

me through my dreams.

 

My day thoughts proclaim

“Soon. Soon. Soon…”

Is this my prayer or the land’s?

 

My destiny flutters,

Monarch-like on the path

of map-less maps

 

Gaps closing between

every move, every choice,

every new, awakened voice.

 

When Father Time

loosens his grip.

Timeless Mother’s arms

 

Comfort and remind me

of promises to come:

A home of my own.

 

This is good to know.

So very good to know.

(c) 2022 M L Meadows

For 

Obe and Robert

Photo by Ryan Brisco on Unsplash

Maps Beget Maps

 A Metaphor Topography

As a budding reflexologist, a map of the body’s systems and organs is something I’ve learned to imprint upon my perception of the feet, hands, and ears of clients. Through alternating pressure touch techniques, a reflexologist can discover an intricate topography in the feet which tells a story of a client’s stresses. Where a person holds stresses and how these impact an individual over time is key to helping them navigate their way to wellness. Combining this perspective with my other character traits of poet and artist, I delight in those unexpected glimpses of when the feet can be to the body what the eyes are to the soul. Don’t steal that tagline! It belongs to my business practice and fits my approach to the discipline.

My personal healing adventures have nurtured a love for the scientific, technical, and nerdy details of anatomy and the physiology of the body’s amazing systems. For my memoir excursion below, however, I prefer to hang out in a soulful, imaginal realm of curiosity, to discover what I am ready to know. What comes next is a kind of map-meaning legacy that emerged spontaneously during a focused writing group prompt based on the working theme, Write for Your Life Road Trip. Since road trip here is standing in as the metaphor for our memoir practice of remembering what matters, what lingers in the background, we honor what is waiting to emerge and be spoken. In this way, we provide a snap shot --- a written polaroid of a moment caught between memory and meaning.

In September (2022), I completed a brief case study on the possible benefits of reflexology for a person living with advanced Alzheimer’s. Sandra, whom I mention in part below, is unlikely to recall how much she relaxed when her feet were in my hands. What I find intriguing are the subtle improvements I observed over the course of only ten days. I began to think more expansively about maps, real and metaphorical, after providing reflexology to Sandra and listening to her altered speech patterns over the weeks I observed her.

A little more context might help here: Sandra lives with her daughter, who is my sister --- yeah, technically my half-sister. But there is a loving affinity that has emerged in recent years between us.  After some discussion in considering Sandra as a case study participant, my sister decided that timing the reflexology sessions at bedtime would be best all around. Thus began a ten-day stretch of reflexology sessions every other evening.

An unusual advantage I experienced with Sandra is that I was able to live in the same home for several weeks. I had moved from Washington to the same region in California but had a housing gap of a few weeks. I welcomed the invitation to share in my sister’s household, which also contains two young children and their father. Working with Sandra in such a loving environment enabled me to see subtle differences in how she coped with her condition as we progressed through the ten-day focus and beyond.

Sandra has some elements of Sundowner’s Syndrome. This shows up as increasing levels of anxiety as the sun closes in on the horizon. Because I am generally making two or three treks to the bathroom during the night (a legacy of injuries sustained in a car crash three years ago), I noted that Sandra was frequently awake, standing as if on pause on the upstairs landing, confused between three directions: the bathroom, her bedroom, and the stairway leading down to the first floor. Notably, after three sessions, she began to sleep through the night and her core balance improved. Her episodes of feeling lost and useless diminished in intensity but remained present. It would take a longer period of study to see how sustainable such improvements could be. It should be mentioned that Sandra was on two medications, one for memory support and the other for hypertension. It has been a few months since I performed the study and a third medication has been added, which addresses part of the depressive progression of Alzheimer’s.

My thinking about maps has changed dramatically since working with Sandra. When she becomes disoriented, she needs landmarks in her environment, such as people and cues to keep her tethered to the present. Despite her difficulty in articulating full sentences, the sentence fragments she gives us provides a kind of map of her mind’s shifting landscape. Some days she appeared to be on relatively level ground. Most days, however, her fear of losing ground or her vulnerable take on reality, is an ever-rushing river of noise in her head. A new sentence begins to form in her thoughts only to be swept away in her effort to speak it before it is lost to some region we cannot visit. Sandra spoke a particular sentence often: “I need a map to tell me…what am I supposed to be doing?”

In her presence, I started thinking about her concept of a map that tells us what we are supposed to be doing. “If only I knew it…I could do it” is another phrase she repeated. Sandra’s craving for certainty is evident in her questioning and clenching hands, which gradually became less prominent with each session. Losing her executive functions for making decisions or recognizing the people she sees every day is a perennial problem. By way of comparison, when most of us have traveled with a printed map and its locator key, we can generally orient ourselves through unfamiliar territory. But what if we’re already in familiar territory and the map’s printed key has somehow slipped off the page? Or, the map itself appears upside down and refuses to right itself? How would one cope with that?

 When I think of Sandra living with Alzheimer’s, a woman I have known for thirty-five years, I try to understand how she is experiencing life without access to the internal compass that once held her true north. What happens internally that makes her map of the world off-kilter? To have one’s most basic orientation slip away every few minutes or so must feel absolutely terrorizing. This can happen through any number of traumatic events or breakdowns and is not limited to the conditions indicative of a form of dementia. In such a case, who gets to make the maps we live by, then?

As of this writing, I get to see Sandra bi-weekly and give her reflexology on her feet when I visit my sister’s home. There are subtleties in how Sandra responds to her sessions, like letting me know she can feel something happening in her body when I touch certain reflex areas on her feet.  Otherwise, she is  experiencing each session as if its the first-time ever. Her face lights up when I walk into the room, even though I must reintroduce myself, including how I am related to her daughter. In a bittersweet yet beautiful way, I have learned to moderate my tone of voice and manner of speaking so Sandra feels absolutely safe amidst her diminishing capacity to negotiate her own environment. The environment she has no control over. In our reflexology sessions, however, there is no pressure for Sandra to remember anything. There is only the opportunity to receive and be calmed and to rest. This, I can assure you, is its own faithful destination. *

* Published by permission of my sister, Tara Mason Stogdill, who loves and cares for her mom, Sandra, in the heart of her young family. Love you!

Image retrieved from Unsplash

I have loved maps since before I could read. When I was a child and received the occasional monetary allowance for chores completed, one of the first items I ever bought myself was a globe of our earth. My memory for the places I’d been was exceptionally detailed at an early age.  It wasn’t always trees or rocks or bodies of water or houses that were my cues. Often it was the memory of who I was with, the feel of the car’s seat beneath my thighs and glutes, and the smell of the wind or rain, the feel of sunlight coming in through the car’s window. What happened around me and within me became crystalized memories, like carbon under immense pressure creates multifaceted diamonds.

From the age of ten onward, I was the designated navigator on hikes and car trips. Consulting a map was a role I cherished. In the eighth grade, when we still lived in Pennsylvania, I once performed a community school project that involved making 3” x 5” hand-drawn maps for groups canvassing neighborhoods. I even color coded the various maps using colored pencils.  My teacher was so tickled over the result that she had the maps laminated, so they would endure through more classes and years to come.

Image of Milford, PA retrieved from Grey Towers

About two dozen cross-country road trips have been undertaken in my life. The summer I was ten, my mother made that year’s road trip an unforgettable experience for me. While my stepfather drove us from what is now Santa Clarita (CA) to the Jersey shore and back, Mom read the entire book, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, by Dee Brown. To this day, I can recall where we were on either route 66, or route 90, or route 80, when certain battles and treaty agreements and their subsequent failures, were read aloud. My mother had an alto singing voice, but she otherwise never read to us as children. She wasn’t a naturally patient person. Except for that one road trip. This made for a uniquely audible map of the Indian territories that we drove through and camped within. I have no idea why she chose that book and that year to read to us. It was 1970 and the book had just been published. But I remain grateful for the immersion into such a detailed history, which that book and that trip provided.

My mother’s reading of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee gave me a glimpse into her that I never had before or after. She was notoriously awful at directions and got lost frequently. And she suffered from night blindness. That may be why I became so good at reading maps. Following recipes and being at home in the kitchen were not Mom’s forte either. But out of family necessity, they became mine. We moved frequently, sometimes twice in a year. This meant new schools and teachers, new churches, strange houses and different routes to the local grocery store and filling station. By the time my mom was the age I am now, which is sixty-three, she had a pronounced alcohol induced dementia. She died during the autumn equinox of 2013, at only seventy-three, unable to recognize my siblings or my voice on the phone. Mom became paralyzed with agoraphobia in her later years, probably because of her inability to orient herself in time and place.

Mom developed her agoraphobia relatively young and over a gradual timeline. I learned that agoraphobia is not just a fear of open spaces, as is commonly assumed. It is more complicated than that. Consensus among various psychiatric journals suggest that agoraphobia relates to an individual’s panicked perception that there is no escape from, or help with, an impending, unnamable doom. They live with an increasing, pervasive feeling that all of life is about to go terribly wrong and no one can stop it because that is how it feels to them. But they can’t necessarily express this in so many words, whether it is trailing a form of dementia or a panic disorder or a traumatic brain injury. Hence, an often compulsive need to limit exposure to people and unfamiliar surroundings. But the unexpected vagaries of life will persist. Loved ones, by necessity, are then forced to navigate these self-diminishing terrains.

I’m not yet clear about why I am suddenly recalling pivotal memories from age ten. But one more wants to make an appearance here. I remember feeling quite old the summer I was ten. I had started to imagine my parents as dead, from a tragic car crash --- hopefully without my brothers and I in the car.  I was exhausted from negotiating household and family responsibilities in compensation for my mother’s alcohol diminishing capacities. Every time we moved somewhere new, I ultimately looked around the neighborhood and church we attended for potential foster parents. Just in case we needed them, I thought at the time. I made sure to pick out folks that truly wanted kids and could adopt my siblings and I together.

My cautionary planning was triggered by a near-miss one late, late night on a curvy road edged with cliffs, which I recall as part of the Topatopa Mountains of Ventura, California. My stepfather was driving us home in our unremarkably brown 1965 Chrysler Rambler station wagon. My mother was sleeping off her overindulgence in the front passenger seat. My brothers were in their sleeping bags in the rear, on either side of me. Dad, also under the influence, was over-correcting at every curve in the road. As was my habit by then, I remained hyper-alert while laying on my back, trying to see the stars in the autumn sky but praying for safety the entire way. I wasn’t a deal maker by nature back then, although I was making deals with God that night. My fear of being the only survivor in a family crash was over the top and had stirred up a war in my gut. My prayers that night were mostly of the spare me and my brothers and I will be your faithful slave variety. I didn’t realize until I was a grown woman that God wasn’t looking for kids to enslave. Such a manner of praying was much more reminiscent of my mother’s tone when approaching God. 

At one point, in that pivotal car ride, I found myself sprawled over the front seat and grabbing the steering wheel to make sure our Rambler stayed in its correct lane. Underneath my breath I was literally willing the few oncoming headlights to stay in their lanes. Consulting a map that night would have been impossible. Luckily, it was unnecessary. We had been on that drive innumerable times before and I knew it by heart. Even in the dark. Still, in my childhood years, I recall wondering if knowing such things by heart created a kind of inner map --- the kind that makes one react spontaneously when triggered. My imaginary wish or yearning, back then, was really for my parents to no longer suffer. It became a mantra born of the need to experience something else in our lives: “Let them die in peace so my brothers and I can live with a good family.” I used to feel so guilty for wanting this or for my parents to stop drinking altogether. My wishful thinking that I might be able to navigate my parents into wellness became a valiant but lost effort. Another twenty years would unfold before I would discover that this particular dilemma is often a shared one --- with other adult children of alcoholics. 

I never did create the map that could heal my parents. But I did navigate one for myself. And for that, I am truly grateful.

Going Deeper: A Catacomb Unburied

Before Breaking Ground: Housing Journey Part 2

In the process of writing Part 1, the following paragraphs emerged as part of my going deeper dialogue. I am devoting this post to those details --- giving the story, and me, some much needed breathing space of our own.  

Something older and deeper feeds my commitment to living with a light footprint, and the cost is not necessarily about money. I'm not a fan of monetizing every aspect of one's life as a way to assign it value. Going much further back than the Part 1 narrative, I think there is a deeper value in sharing my evolution of consciousness about earth's finite resources and what security might become in the midst of warped social memes. During the immense personal trauma of the 1971 Sylmar / San Fernando accelerator quake, my child's mind was impressed with the unleashed power of nature when she screams. My adult mind still holds this revelation as sacred. Our most cherished homes will fail as a haven in such literally earth-shaking scenarios. Fortunately, when one looks at other natural disaster events worldwide, it is a notable commonality that most survivors manage to rally themselves. We do possess an amazing capacity to climb up from the rubble to be truly helpful to others. It is this aspect of humanity that I respect most and carry forward into my forever dreams. 

I was barely eleven years old at the time of the above earthquake. The impressions made on my psyche were writ large --- larger than life as we generally know it --- because trauma is involved. But that event was the 3rd trauma, in less than five-months’ time that my family and I had been a part of.

1971 Sylmar Earthquake Footage

Image located from Wes Clark Blog a young resident witness of the quake who settled in Virginia. 

Two months before the quake, my beloved older brother, Marlin, nearly died from complications of newly onset juvenile diabetes. This initiated a prolonged healing and learning curve in which he and I made important dietary changes, even though the rest of our family did not. Two months before that near-miss on my brother's life, we faced historic Clampitt Fire of Sept 25th and 26th (1970). Our house was, at that time, part of a brand-new neighborhood development (Saugus - Newhall), now merged as Santa Clarita, California. We had to be evacuated because that fire raged so close as to singe our roof --- aided and abetted by arson and the Santa Ana winds. 

The 1970 CA Fire Siege

One of the cleansing aspects of that particular fire's path was that it destroyed the Spahn Ranch, an old movie set that had been the last location that housed cult leader Charles Manson, and his the family compound. For readers too young to know the significance of this to the history of California and of our society, you can visit the history page via the following link: Cult At Spahn Ranch

Earlier that fiery September day, when my brothers and I arrived from school on the bus, we could see the burning horizon and realized it was very close. The sky emitted a roiling grey-green cast as spark-filled plumes bellowed upwards. The unimagined heat and flames raced to consume more and more ground --- which meant it was racing toward us. Even to a child this was obvious and needed no explanation. I saw an unyielding appetite made voracious with its need for air and territory. 

Before the fire reached the hills directly behind our home, turkey vultures were spiraling above in ever tightening circles, part of the blackening masses that were alive above our heads --- alive with ominous intent. Tarantulas were literally racing into the streets from the hills, too, like an overdone movie animation segment. Except it was real and there was no camara man to yell "cut!" One tarantula managed to hop up onto my leg without being dastardly enough to cause me any complications. It was fleeing for its life without seeking to defend itself from a duly spellbound girl of ten. We spent the next few nights on other peoples’ living room floors in a nearby neighborhood, still smelling the rancid smoke that infiltrated our hair, clothing and sleeping bags. None of this had been fully processed, psychologically, when the accelerator quake arrived five months later, turning our rather vulnerable moment of psychic relief inside out all over again.

My comprehension of the destructive nature of fire was crystalized when I witnessed the burning orange horizon, with its clambering walls of leaping flames, moving toward us so rapidly I felt confused. I could hear the outrageous roar of oxygen being sucked from the air. I couldn’t breathe without choking. None of us could. The heat of this blaze, when it reached the hills upon which our new development was built, was like being conveyed into a giant convection oven. An acrid and particulate taste of ash filled our mouths and throats, accompanied by a black smudgy film collecting around our eyes, our nostrils, our lips --- on adults and children alike. Witnessing my stepdad and other neighborhood men standing on the steaming roof of our house, frantically hosing down everything to keep the whole tract from being consumed, also left an imprint more vivid than any movie set can imitate. That heat, that scorched air, those shouts from people I knew a little and of their crying children, all of it was bonded to the chaos of cars and motorcycles speeding off to hurry people to safety. Such was the hour and wave after wave after wave of rescue to an unknown relief.

The aroma of burnt wild animals was no grand barbeque but an open incinerator of flesh and bone. Even at this writing, more than fifty years later, I can recall how hot ashes of all hues swirled in the riotous air currents --- like snowflakes of death. Luckily, we too were evacuated for several days while our house, though singed on the roof's edges, was miraculously spared. But my sleeping dream life became troubled for many years thereafter.

From the moment that 6 am quake shocked us all awake, until we could leave for New Jersey to start fresh three months later, our home, like most of our neighbors' homes, instantly became a source of danger. It was no longer a family sanctuary. It was 2200 square feet of instantly uninhabitable rooms and hallways, an unusable kitchen with busted windows, with cabinets heaving their contents. Bathtubs were severed from their moorings and toilets became cracked porcelain urns of smelly water. The hills around us were still black and sooty. The dust and ash the quake kicked into the air meant that thousands of people were choking for air as they were running from their homes in the barely dawning sunlight, just like us. We were unable to see or breathe, knocked by every thrust of the quake's energy into walls, jumping furniture, down stairwells, barely escaping chimneys that tilted precariously toward potential collapse.

My parents, my two brothers, and my small dog Charlie and I slipped and stumbled, barefoot, over freshly shattered glass and water and tropical fish, when the 20-gallon aquarium that had adorned our entry met us like a tidal wave in our effort to escape. Broken water pipes and leaking gas lines spewed their contents amid the thunderous crashes of falling debris. Unseen forces, which none of us could command or prevent, uncoiled beneath our feet. From split-second upon split-second fashion, thoughts jumbled together to puzzle out what sorts of immediate danger we were in: Was this an earthquake or the apocalypse? A nuclear bomb detonation? If I escape this what is left of the world? To a child of barely 11, it was unimaginable that the whole world wasn’t also in this crisis of chaos. 

For months beforehand, the smell of ash and scorched, fetid nature was an assault on all our senses. I watched, on that quaking delirious day as my fragile mother's will broke. I watched as members of other people's families fell apart from one too many disasters. Some people grew sullen while others turned combative. Some became hysterical, as if the need to express the chaos would somehow cause it to mercifully abate. As if that would somehow put order to the madness we were standing in, falling in, and stepping though, second by second by second. And then, there was my mother, again. A thirty-year old alcoholic who had one more reason to stop believing in life being good or safe. Frame by murky frame of unrelenting force impressed upon us the untamable chaos of having nowhere to go to escape. No way to turn it off. And when it did stop, ever so briefly, the quiet became the prelude to another series of jolts and screams and confusions. 

Evidently, because of the dams that were in our region, and the nuclear power plants emerging in the area, catastrophes of even greater proportions could have been set in motion by that earthquake. Little did we know how unprepared we were until that day. There was a consensus among scientists in news reports later that the dams that existed in the surrounding area would not be able to sustain another quake like that. The quake we had survived, that is. Barely. In other words, it could have been so much worse. But what I wanted to know --- what began to play in my mind as a child, was this: what can we do to improve our relationship to the natural world? To each other? And, as I grew into my adolescence, I wondered: Did we have to be set up to constantly compete for nature’s resources? What if resources could be used wisely and shared fairly? What if we didn’t need big houses and cars and asphalt and skyscrapers?

Within weeks of the quake my parents had to let our damaged house go back to the bank and declared bankruptcy. The insurance coverage for catastrophic representation had proven inadequate when so many homes and families faced real crisis at the same time. On the day of the quake, my nuclear family of five members moved immediately into an 17-foot travel trailer that my stepdad had purchased only a month or so before. It was parked in our driveway. What was meant to be our residence for travel would now become the shelter we would not otherwise have had. Little did we know it would be our primary residence for most of that year, even after we left to relocate to New Jersey and Pennsylvania in the Spring.

This made us seem lucky. Our neighbors had to sleep on their miniscule lawns, exposed to the elements. We had a tiny fridge with which to keep my brother's insulin safe. We had a cookstove that we could use. We could ride out the hundreds of aftershocks without exposure to the elements or having walls and furniture displaced repeatedly.  But we were trapped, too. The Saugus - Newhall Canyon was impassible for weeks. Helicopters brought in potable water, donated food, medical supplies, portable potties, doctors and nurses, and law enforcement. With over 200 aftershocks in the first week --- with everything rattling and thundering at frequent but unpredictable intervals, there could be no school, no church, no normal activities that drew people together to think about and talk of other things. Everyone was thrown into survival mode. Having the privacy to pee was something to be grateful for.

In that first horrific week, some folks began looting the goods that had become exposed from the crumpled storefronts of the new and fashionable shopping malls, located less than a mile away. Some individuals were even crossing the fractured natural boundaries of people’s houses close by --- because they could.  The gunfire of police, as they chased off those who were looting, became the nightly pop, pop, popping sound I was suddenly falling asleep to every night. The unique echo of handguns being fired at strangers in the distance, ricocheted up the canyon and back down it. And, in once case at least, the unknown strangers looting in the rubble turned out to be the well-educated father whose kid was in my 5th grade classroom at that time. Something desperate had been born. Not just in the miasma around me but within me. I would develop an over-the-top startle response that took years to heal.

That desperate aspect born in me was the need to know. The need-to-know true things. The need-to-know facts about emergency responses and catastrophe preparedness. If everything could be destroyed or stolen, what would it take to become equipped for a different life?  A life that went beyond survival to one of thriving, with no encroachment on the lives of others. With no encroachment on the balance of nature. Was it even possible to understand life on this planet?  I wanted answers but not through the lens of panic nor to manipulate anyone's desperate vulnerability but to prepare for recovery. To understand that the elements of any restoration must live in the structures of the present. To embrace the creative gift that living with uncertainty can be attended to in ways that will keep a person healthy and communities intact but responsive more than oppressive --- responsive to the needs of the present and future. I possess no blatantly clear moment of total realization, although my near death experience (NDE) of 2019 gifted me with something akin to a broader perspective of what profound realization might look like across an individual lifespan. For me, a series of small, breathtaking clarities over a full and challenging life have helped me to develop a sense of calm in the storms of a beloved terra firma. I cannot be the person who stops the hurricanes of change but I might be able to ride through the eye of the storms. Every earthquake eventually ceases to shake. Every fire eventually ceases to burn. Every gale will eventually blow itself to stillness. And so I learned to pray. And my most frequent prayer suggests that I can be present to all those I love and hope for. And I hope for others what I hope for myself: A place to call home that offers rest and resiliency rather than creature comforts and separation.

Early in this life I developed a deep sense of connection and respect for a greater consciousness and the interconnectedness of all life. As a result of several catastrophes, I discovered that my need-to-know true things was not to avoid shocking catastrophes of nature and men. No. As I matured in life, it was obvious I wanted to know how to come back from my own edge of ignorance, whatever I was confronted with. In particular, this was more often about how I and my human family impact nature by the way we live and wage war. I was just a preteen when I became aware of this. After all, this was all happening during the Vietnam war era, when televised reports were live and the news was not yet a contrived reality show but a documentation of lives and cultures we could not see for ourselves otherwise.  I picked up on things from the difficult news in the forefront, and from the adults who talked among themselves yet within earshot of my ever listening vigilant wakefulness. And that, I suppose, would be the background. In this way, I discovered that parents mistakenly believe that they need to protect their children from truthful things. 

Why do parents have a misperceived tendency to pretend all will be well when it takes a lot of hands, even young ones, to restore true wellness after just one, let alone multiple tragedies? Nevertheless, having no home, and having no way of  knowing where and how to claim a home is a primary human tragedy. This tragedy is faced by millions of people right now. We cannot turn off this fact like we can switch off a light or let a computer go into sleep mode. Whether I am plugged in or off-grid, members of my human family are homeless. Whether you are plugged in or off-grid, members of our human family are homeless and hurting. Without a home and if refugees to boot, they are also stateless. 

My questions belong to the present, but they began when I was an 11-year-old: Is there a way to live that allows us to share resources rather than hoard them or monetize them for profit? What are they ways in which we can live lightly and in harmony with the nature of things, eliminating the habit of violence over territory and inequality? As far as I am concerned, the answers to these questions reside within us as mentor-leaders, setting in motion a collective ethic of the right use of will.

If the earth is a mystery school, as some ancient teachings suggest, perhaps the burden of youth is to witness and challenge untrue things. And maybe the burden of the mature is to apply wisdom to inevitable change and the turmoil it can bring up in oneself and others. To make sure that the true and beautiful and meaningful things prevail. I have experienced a kind of grace that allowed me to transform what once left me weak and scared, uncertain and hyperalert. I believe now that the grace of what truly matters can lead us toward a living design in resilience and strength and love. It is at once personal, intimate, and inclusive. 

If building my own tiny home is an act of intention and self-determination for me, would it be this for others, too?

Communion

A place is not a place

Without one of us

and all of us

living within it.

I shall stand for this:

a home within a home

where the heart

the body, the feet, the soul

the voice, the hands, the will,

all collaborate

to bring harmony

to purpose, to bring 

thriving to life.

Amen

(c) 2023 M L Meadows

Before Breaking Ground: A History

 

The Journey Before the Journey, Part 1

I am embarking on a custom tiny home co-build. In anticipation of the learning that will be involved I have been thinking through all the housing and life experiences that will be informing this adventure. My next few posts will be about those formative experiences.

Summer 1999: The first of four years of my family’s yurt living. My firstborn son was 4 ½ and my twins (a daughter and son) were 2 years old. I was newly pregnant with my last baby, a daughter, who would be born the beginning of January 2000, in the yurt. A few months after the 1st yurt photo was taken (below) we had both roofs replaced because of mold issues. My husband at the time had tried to save money and didn't purchase the roof material as heavy cotton ducking treated for moisture resistance (which I had wanted). Rather, he purchased a vinyl material that was awful to work with and a bear to seal after I had pieced and sewn all the seams with an industrial sewing machine. The sewing itself would not have been possible on a regular sewing machine. The fabric and industrial thread were so thick and heavy, it would have burned out the motor in a day. We had obtained a secondhand industrial sewing machine from someone who lived relatively close by who had heard about our yurt building project. I remember there being a lot of curiosity among our rural neighbors regarding our simple living experiment. Because of this natural interest, tools and equipment had a way of showing up when we needed it. 

It also helped that I had some uncommon skills. For example, my experience with using an industrial sewing machine began when I was only 14 years old (1974). While I attended high school, I was employed by a member of my rural church in his family’s pillow cleaning business. Before disposable pillows came on the scene, clinics, hospitals, and nursing homes needed to have their feather pillows cleaned regularly. Such a detail about routine life --- like life before plastic or pillows that were handed down through a few generations --- most people would not knowingly recall such things without firsthand experience. Howard Graham had invited me into that early job, since he was the owner and a church elder. I was already an experienced seamstress. Since the age of 12 I had been sewing most of my own clothes. There had been some custom work I had done in curtains and drapes for neighbors, as well as some occasional clothing alteration work. My scope of interest and skill was rather advanced when it came to sewing.

It took longer to adjust to the loudness of the industrial sewing machine than it did to become proficient at using it, with its requirement of frequent oiling, and refilling bobbins with the heavy-duty thread that came off of 8 inch cones rather than small spools like home machines. I quickly learned to sew the heavier cotton fabric pillow casings (ticks) which would hold the cleaned feathers --- feathers that were blown into the tick casings via a seven and a half inch opening left in the final seam of each tick. This opening, which had to be exact to fit the feather blower arm into, was then sewn closed by Howard, the feather-cleaner machine operator-owner. He wore protective eye and ear gear, as well as a particulates mask to avoid inhaling the zillion downy bits of feathers that managed to escape at the tail end. This part of the sequence was done in a high cube truck parked outside the commercial space we seamstresses worked in, but close to the delivery-style door that led from our sewing stations.

One day, on my way in to start a shift after school, I curiously peeked into the back of the high cube truck station. Howard, a wiry 5-foot 6-inch blond man in his early fifties was bent over his work, with all the eye, ear, and mouth gear in place, as well as his coverall suit. He was haloed in a perpetual light of downy flurries, a never melting feather layer accumulating on all surfaces. From that quick peek into Howard’s workspace, I could understand why he often seemed out-of-sorts after he had spent several hours in that station. To avoid molds and mites, that station had to remain warm, dry and clean. With all of that gear on it was hot and claustrophobic! No wonder he never had anyone else trained for that station. My appreciation for Howard as an employer, with excellent working conditions for us, and as a family man and elder, pained my young heart with a tender gratitude. And, because he was the only one who ever operated that part of the pillow making sequence, there was never a pillow that wasn’t closed by Howard’s seven and a half inches of stitching. I cannot imagine how many hundreds of thousands of pillows he cleaned and refilled, plus new pillows designed for weddings and hotels. By today's standards, Graham's Pillow Cleaning was a modest family business in the Poconos of Pennsylvania, but it maintained a service area that included several counties.  

It took three female seamstresses to keep up with the demand for new pillow ticks. We were paid ten cents per tick casing and there were three different styles of casings. We had to pay attention to the fabric and the cut to know where the final opening had to be left for the feather-fill. I was the youngest but could sew up to eighty ticks in an hour, depending on the cut of the fabric and style ordered. I worked for just under two years in this position. Then, shortly after my sixteenth birthday, I was removed from school by my parents. Everything changed dramatically then. 

In protest of my parent’s actions, Howard gave me my final check with his sincere explanation. He didn’t agree with my parent’s plans to marry me off young or deny me an education. He knew I wanted to pursue a profession in the arts but that was not to be. A year later I was a child-bride in an arranged marriage in the state of Virginia. That story has been told in another essay but the part that is relevant here is how being at the whim of the adults in my life is part of my experience of housing, too. It figures in heavily with the ability to design and own one’s personal home. I would say it is even an intention at self-determination, especially for a young family who would never qualify for or want a traditional mortgage to shelter their children. When I think about the avenues that led to my family’s yurt home endeavor, and the homesteading experiences I was aiming for at the time, it seems integral to the emotional, spiritual, and educational web I have been weaving through this life.

 Despite my best efforts, the first roof over our yurts failed on every level. It sweated and dripped condensation, leaked at the seams, sagged under the sun’s heat, and became stiff in the cold. There was no ceiling insulation either. It proved to be useless. Within a few months we purchased our custom sewn roof with the properly treated fabric, from the same yurt supplies company that no longer exists. I think it was in Arizona. The company was new at the time and based off an early book on custom yurt building by a female artisan. We followed her design very carefully. After we installed the new yurt roof, I took photos of the one I had sewn (of that awful vinyl) and sent them to the materials supplier, for their inspection. In a phone conversation later, they assured me I had done everything correctly. I realized, by the end of that phone call, that the cost of materials and the many hours of my sewing labor were a powerful lesson for me. I was relieved to learn that the yurt company stopped providing the vinyl material on their future kits. There was no anger in this for me so no bridges were burned with the people learning to develop their yurt materials company.

For insulation, we installed some made-for-yurts reflective insulation which was less than adequate. Our excellent quality wood stove made up for this dilemma. Almost. The floor was essentially a well finished but uninsulated deck platform. The kids and I were happy in this home life for the most part, and we were wonderfully healthy. The best sleep of my life was during those years --- not surrounded by EMFs in our walls but welcoming the subtle phases of moonlight as it bathed our yurt home.

 Our primary yurt was 24' in diameter. Both yurts (pictured above) could be entered from an external entrance and had one internal doorway linking the two. We had three points of electrical connection. One fed my 54 sq. ft. kitchen set up, a second fed our central lighting and computer/VCR equipment area, and the final one fed the bathroom/washer/dryer complex. We were outdoors most of the time. Our sleep hygiene tradition consisted of baths followed by story time. I designed the beds that we slept on and my husband and I co-built them. One was a movable loft bed platform for my oldest son, and the twin’s beds rolled out from under our king size bed at night. I often have very clear and spontaneous recall of myself or their dad reading stories as the kids fell asleep. In the winter months, we would all be snuggled under our down comforters and the creaking of the wood stove, with its radiating heat and flickering ember glow, made our a cozy space a haven for peaceful dreams. 

The smaller yurt can be seen partially to the right and rear of the primary yurt (above) and was our bathing room, consisting of an open wardrobe, an iron clawfoot tub, a sink with open shelving, and a composting toilet. That yurt was 14' in diameter and the hot water we enjoyed was provided by a propane on-demand water heater. Beyond the bathing yurt was a repurposed metal garden shed that held a washer and dryer. I mostly used our outdoor laundry lines, which were strung between the fruit trees in the orchard that was our front yard. This multi-acre orchard compound was fenced in because we otherwise have had cougars, bobcats, deer, milking goats and the occasional black bear wanting to visit our apple and plum trees, raspberry bushes, and raised garden beds. Our food and toilet composting piles were kept separate and I followed permaculture principles for using the compost in appropriate areas. 

Our yurt compound was in the northeast section of the orchard. Toro Creek itself ran behind our yurts, about 16 feet back and then down an 8-foot bank. Even in drought years this lovely riparian habitat allowed us to experience the seasons with an abundance of native blackberries and a constant green aroma from the willows and sycamores that flourished along its banks.

 Spring 2001: We added a secondhand Pacific yurt, (visible in the left background of the next photo, below). This was my home schooling / music classroom and office. It was 20' in diameter. The photo itself captures a small gathering of Quaker friends we had out to the property for an orchard potluck. We were members of a local Quaker Silent Meeting group at the time. Many different groups in the area were fascinated to hear of a young family that lived on the land in yurts in rural San Luis Obispo County. I maintained the orchard of approximately 70 fruit trees for 5 years, processing most of the fruit yields and completing the annual rounds of pruning. Our water came down a gravity fed line from a spring on the upper, south side of the property. My former in-laws had the primary gravity fed line feeding their 100-plus-year-old owner-built rustic cedar two-story. Their square footage was likely under 800. The original water pipes and electrical upgrades were grandfathered in by the county. The original construction seemed solid.

 

Our yurts, considered non-permanent dwellings, were never really questioned seriously by the county personnel. At least, I was never made aware of an issue.  However, we did get visits from county-based planners or engineers, or some similar labeled person from time to time. They usually came out for some other project underway and generally made an effort to “peek in” on us. They always left smiling. Our home was clean, orderly, and clearly fostered a simple life. Any questions asked pertained to safety and warmth and getting through the winter season. Though we originally had a cookstove with an oven in our kitchen area, about 2 years into our residence in the yurts we removed the stove. We simply didn’t use one for five years because we had become raw foodists after my daughter had developed type 1 diabetes before she was 2 years old. Removing the stove also meant that we didn’t officially have a kitchen, according to local codes. I think that may have been why the county permit officials never hassled us and viewed our situation as non-permanent. Which it was, of course.

The initial agreement for living and working on the land was meant to be no longer than three years. My mother-in-law was recovering from a devastating fall from her part in a team effort at dismantling a metal Butler building roof off-site. Additionally, her son, my then husband, considerably younger than I, needed time to integrate his environmental studies degree into a meaningful work life.

Summer of 2002: My husband lost interest in upgrading / finishing certain aspects of our yurt home, like insulating the floor, and building out the deck to include the third yurt or creating a firepit for outdoor gatherings. He wanted to live in a more traditional house, possibly because he felt our life there was too impermanent. I never felt clear on what he wanted. But a small and modest home was important to us in our discussions of the topic, so my mother-in-law helped us locate, then purchased and had transported a small, pre-owned modular home. I think it was approximately 24’ x 35’ (840 sq. ft.). I cannot recall if it was brought in one or two sections, but it traveled along four miles of pretty rough road. Two of those miles are back-to-back crazy hairpin turns, which rim the rural creek and canyon edges. Breathtaking but dangerous if you get distracted because there are no guardrails. The truck driver hauling the modular out to us was nearly a wreck by the time he arrived --- it had taken at least four hours but there were no mishaps, I’m happy to say. He was an excellent navigator, it turns out.

We set up the home on the northwest end of the orchard, still along the Creekside. A small septic area already existed there, from when a trailer had been hooked up a decade or so before. We had the septic updated and a foundation laid by the time the modular home was delivered. A remodel process began. We built a lovely deck across the entire south facing side. I slowly built a 4-foot-wide walking path by hand. It was a sand and gravel affair, but I enjoyed the process. I did minimal landscaping otherwise but wanted to use permaculture principles I had learned through reading and extensions courses at Cal-Poly.

I was 42 at the time we began that remodel and looking back, I can see conflicting agendas unfolding that I couldn’t perceive at the time. I came to believe that our remaining on the property was incurring expenses and pressures on my mother-in-law that she should not be having to deal with. Discussions between longevity and lifestyle and contribution and interdependence went unresolved.  Additionally, I was involved in a nonprofit agency serving families with children newly diagnosed with diabetes. My oldest daughter was less than 2 when she was diagnosed in 1999 --- so, between my experiences with my brother and my young daughter, I was a natural shoo-in for being the director of The Children's Diabetes Network (of SLO county). It was a 10-20 hour a week position from home (mostly), with by-weekly liaison work in one of the hospitals. I organized two events a year: a clinic and a seminar. Volunteer support came from college students at Cal-Poly. The small home we remodeled was given the name Orchard House, so that my mother-in-law would always have a place for someone to live and take care of her orchard, as I had been doing for the years we lived on her property. Sadly, meaningful communication was slipping with my husband. Family resentments were building around financial issues I was never a party to but wanted to understand. Out of respect for the situation, the people, and the time period involved, it may be best to simply say that the family atmosphere became confusing to me and I could sense a reckoning of some unwholesome mess coming down the pike.

The following photos are from the realty website that eventually posted and sold the 54 acres of property that our yurts, the Orchard House, and the original dwellings were located. Nothing is fancy because we didn’t need it to be. 

The snapshot below is likely taken from the northwest corner of the orchard, facing south.

I believe the above photo is the view from behind the Orchard House, 
located in the northwest section of the orchard.  The fruit trees are primarily semi-dwarf.

Before I was part of the family compound in Toro Creek Canyon, when I was newly pregnant with my firstborn son (1994), the section of trees and hills across from the orchard (middle to background of the photo above) were blackened by a fire that raged through the canyon near the end of a long drought period. I was with the family on a trip to Northern California when we received the news that a fire was heading into the canyon and threatening my future mother-in-law's home and property. By the time we traveled back to the property, the fire was under control and the meadows, which are now lush and green but hidden in the middle ground of the photo above, were filled with fire trucks and firemen, and black, scorched earth was all around. The structures and orchard were unharmed. While I stepped in to help with food and clean-up for all the people coming and going, I recall thinking how quickly one can lose everything - or come very close to losing it. This reminded me of an earlier time of deep impressions, during my childhood, when a devastating fire and an earthquake, in southern California, threatened those I loved and depended upon. And which gave me an eyewitness experience of how differently people handled the trauma of losing their livelihood and housing security when faced with immanent and unavoidable danger. I write more on this later in Part 2.

The living room post-remodel. My husband at the time put in the flooring, 
which added so much to the warmth and character of the upgrade.

 

The kitchen of the Orchard House, post remodel. 
The light is wonderfully generous.

The dining and back entry of the Orchard House, post-remodel. 
The cave-like dimness of our former yurts made the generous light of the new house 
a welcome adjustment.

The master bedroom of the Orchard House, post-remodel.

 

The second bedroom/office of the Orchard House, post-remodel.

 The view of the land from the middle of the orchard, looking southwest.

By the Winter of 2003, we made an imperfect leap to Orcas Island. Therein began my experience with community land trusts and the eventual moving into a home created by OPAL CLT of Orcas Island. 

 In my opinion, the original agreements with my former in-laws needed to be clarified and updated, annually, throughout the five years I lived there. But this did not happen, I think, because of communication challenges and issues I was not necessarily informed on. One agreement was that I was earning a sweat-equity share in the value of the property. Sadly, the potential good of such a plan and the potential conversations it could have fostered fell by the wayside. Once I painfully realized I needed to divorce the father of my children, other issues became prominent and I never got to hear the full story from the perspective of the others involved. Nor did they ever hear mine. I'll skip over the next five years of my trial by fire. I can bridge those years simply by saying that my now adult children still love their grandparents and extended family. It was never my intention to get in the way of that, no matter how harshly things unfolded with nonsensical custody battles. I am probably naïve in clinging to the belief that a more whole and truthful version of the story will find its way to the light of day. Perhaps when all parties are ready. In the meantime, I incurred some fresh scars to accompany the grace and grit that carried me forward.  

 At this point in my life, I can honestly say I have forgiven those nonsensical battles but I hope I have retained their lessons. It was nearly an invisible war. It took many years and was costly on so many levels, but a small community of friends on Orcas Island became a proud witness of my endurance and the principles I was endeavoring to apply to my life in general. Please note that I am imperfect and not saying that I did everything just right. I can only say that I tried and I didn't give up although much was surrendered. 

I learned so much through my starts and stops and growth as a person about the value of developing within a community. Admittedly, the legal processes that helped, and sometimes hindered, my wellbeing seemed terribly hollow when all was said and done. I found them problematic and inefficient throughout the experiences that led to my becoming a single parent. The circus of my now ex-husband’s felony trial and conviction left an indelible mark on my heart and certainly on the lives of our children.  Add to that the burden of a bankruptcy, and it becomes easier to understand my reluctance to mingle money and partnership and business without very clear guidelines and commitments. I believe a bankruptcy could have been avoided if the truth had been sought earlier, and had I known who to talk to for help, the ripple of damage may have been much less. One legacy it burdened me and my kids with was a postponement in qualifying for the purchase of a home of our own for six years. That is a big chunk of my children’s home life spent in other dwellings and frequent moves. There is more to the story, but those details have to be sorted out and are best reserved for a more in-depth memoir. Regardless of my scars, I still believe in happy endings. However, we need to have some happy-in-the-middle stuff, too. 

I think one of my happy middles will involve my tiny home journey. My life trajectory seems to be a consistent messenger of paying attention to the process of things, so I believe that the process matters. It is as much a part of the end-product as the people who dream it and do the work. While living in the San Juan Islands, I engaged in a large amount of barter to meet my family's needs and this involved relationship building and earning trust. My fifteen years in the Islands became a powerful mix of love, diversity, spirituality, and community leadership challenges and victories. I gained so much from the way others demonstrated their presence, their wisdom, and their practical leadership in local oriented change. I hope that I will be able to translate some of that into the necessary process of a CLT for pocket villages here in Sonoma County. Such a project is a vision whose time has come. It does, however, take people with significant guts, endurance, and life experience (read: mistakes, lessons learned), t0 make that dream right and real. An inevitable win-win, as some say. Timely, but not necessarily a fast-tracked enterprise, although the housing crisis would make it seem so.

Going Deeper is reserved for Part 2