seeking home

It seems when challenges happen they happen in a volley.

A few days ago my husband and I got the news that the house we’re living in, my grandparents’ house, will be put up for sale within the next couple months, and that my grandparents are moving out in August to Ohio.

My husband has a job. I found some part-time work that had me hopeful for better, more permanent things in the near future. At the least we’d no longer be leaking money.

We get this news and we’re left scrambling. How? How do we survive on our own when two meager wages does not equal a livable income? Not in Florida we can’t. My grandpa invites us to move into the top floor of the two-story duplex that they’ll be buying. Our very own place! For the first time in almost a year!

But we have to go immediately because jobs and after some discussion “immediately” defined itself as 1-2 weeks, now closer to one week. We’ll move into my cousin’s home which is a historical home built in 1840. It’s the kind of house a person could get lost in. He’s not on a six-figure income, just incredibly savvy, and he’s willing to let us stay with him until we can move into that duplex.

At the least we don’t have to consider returning to Korea.

Now the other part of this story–yesterday I went to the doctor to get my blood work results and was told that I have high cholesterol and need to do something about it immediately. That wasn’t what I expected to hear. Yet I think about it and yeah, I don’t exercise these days, I don’t eat well, what do I expect exactly?

This could be the reason my vision’s screwed up–blind spot, flashes of light.

Maybe it’s the reason I feel like I have the flu right now? No idea. She didn’t really give me much outside of my results.

Yesterday I thought, maybe my body has finally broken and my brain hasn’t gotten the memo yet to follow suit. In the mornings, while husband and son are sleeping, I sit at the computer and think about everything before us and my eyes well with tears. This is too much. How do we keep going like this?

I look around this room, the one that was supposed to be for my son and has become makeshift office/storage. It’s cluttered with unpacked boxes, vacuum-sealed bags, storage tubs, scattered all about. There’s barely a place to walk. The “desk” is a rickety collapsible table better suited for the outdoors. We’re fortunate to have the space. When we were living with his parents it was a far sadder, more frustrating situation in its own way.

I don’t want to leave Florida. I don’t want to start from scratch yet again.

What’s that song say? “You can’t go home and you can’t stay here.”

There we are, the defining theme of the moment.

My husband says to think of it as another adventure. After all, wasn’t that what moving to Korea was for me? That’s what it was for him when he moved to New Zealand.

We were single then, I remind him. If things went awry, we only had to worry about ourselves. Now we’ve got our son and I want stability for him. Elusive stability. A two-year old doesn’t need this kind of adventure. And quite frankly, I’m all adventured out.

But there is a piece of me that’s excited because there’s that familiar spark of hope, that everything will work out and it will be better tomorrow than it was today. That in the near future we can stop struggling and worrying, looking at our bank account with its daily plummeting numbers.

And one day I can walk through the door and when I think to myself, “I’m home,” it’ll be the truest sense of that phrase.

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unpredictable bumps and lumps

All we can rely on is unpredictability.

A little over a week ago, I interviewed for a full time instructor position at a nearby college and made it to the final interview where it was between me and one other person.  I had put everything into these interviews and felt that if I didn’t get this job then I’d have to resign myself to either taking what I knew would be a soul crushing job that would likely result in a nervous breakdown or move back to Korea… which would also result in a nervous breakdown.

I didn’t get the job.

Two days later I received a letter in the mail from the dean who wanted me to consider adjunct.  The husband and I discussed this, agreeing that so long as we could stay in our current living arrangement this would be a temporary fix and might even lead to the kind of full time employment that might interest me.  After this discussion, I made the 90 min drive to the main campus to fill out paperwork, get photocopies of legal documents made, and take home the rest of the papers that needed filled out in detail or, in one case, notarized.

I thought, This is working out okay.  I’m getting my foot in the door.

Shortly after I got the process rolling on this adjunct position, I found out that my grandparents, who were letting us stay with them in exchange for caretaking, were being pushed to move up to Ohio.  My husband is working but he draws in a poverty level income.  The income I would take in from working as an adjunct wouldn’t be a whole lot better.  We certainly can’t live on it when we have a child that we’d have to put in daycare.  I’d have a tough time on that sort of income as a single person and I definitely understand how people get stuck in low wage jobs and on government assistance.

We’re going to wind up back in Korea and if that happens I’m going to lose it.

Yesterday my grandfather says, out of the blue, “I was just sitting in the living room thinking.  Why don’t you go up to Ohio and live with us?  We’re going to buy that house next to your aunt’s place.”

The house is a two-story duplex, one living area on the bottom floor and one on the top.  My family in Ohio bought it dirt cheap several years ago and did the renovation on their own to keep costs down and have been renting it out since.  Now my aunt is selling to my grandparents, likely for an extremely reasonable price, and, as it’s right across the road from her, she can come over throughout the day to care for them.

When my grandpa mentioned this, it caught me off guard.  I’d thought for sure we were screwed and it seemed there was no way this could possibly work.  Turns out my aunt’s also on board with us moving up.

But when? I asked and he couldn’t answer.  He told me to keep going with the paperwork on this adjunct position.

So, today I had one of the employment papers notarized ($10 out of pocket for that), came back home, and he asked if we were willing to move to Ohio the 1st of August.

This all happened less than an hour ago and I’m still feeling some of the shock from that brief conversation.

My husband’s saying, “Let’s go.  The sooner the better” and I know that we don’t stand a snowball’s chance in… well… Florida if we stay.

We’re better off if we go, right?  I mean, what is there for us here?  We’re not guaranteed a single thing in Ohio, but I know for a fact that if we stay here we’re going to bite into a nasty rotting lemon and be forced to suck it dry.  I don’t see a single hope where we are right now.  We’ve been struggling since we got here and that’s been about 8 months now where we’ve been spinning our wheels more than getting anywhere.

I don’t want to go to Ohio.  I’m so tired of moving.  I feel like I’ve done so much of it in the past several years, but here we are being offered a place to stay that would in fact be our own space where now we’re sharing a roof.  We’re being offered this same as we have now–rent free.  So, I can cringe at the thought of doing this yet again, but to say no to such a kind, generous offer  because of that childish impulse is ridiculous.  I’m working toward a place of acceptance and reminding myself to be adaptable and open.

This unpredictability is what it is to live after all and same as when I was struggling through the ectopic pregnancy, all I can do is remind myself that this too shall pass.

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