Think Big, Live Tiny - Part 3

Is National Geographic punking me?

Summer, 2011
(12 years earlier)

I pull up in the driveway of my current place of residence that I loosely call home, when in reality it is far from the cozy picture that name implies. I slide the glass door to the side and step in, riding the high of a tantalizing new possibility. I have just returned from having coffee with two friends who invited me to go with them next weekend to see a Tiny Home.

Two years previously I had discovered the Tiny House movement and begun to dream. As I gathered information, my excitement grew. After decades of raising children, starting small businesses, and all the energy that entails, I dreamed of someday living a simple life, off the grid. Looking back, I’m not sure why I thought that living off the grid would be simple, but such is the beauty of the Pollyanna naiveté I was born with.

In 2011 the Tiny House movement was still in its infancy, mainly for granola-eating, I-want-to-make-an-environmental-statement types, or dead broke, I-don’t-have-anywhere-else-to-live folks. I knew that many people chose to build their own Tiny Homes, saving a significant amount of money doing that. I however am not that clever and don’t have the time or the inclination to do it myself. So, it seemed my dream of owning one was a long shot. I used to say of the shopping choices in Hawai’i; “If you can’t find it in K-Mart, you don’t need it.”

Whatever my true motivation, the romantic notion of living in a tiny space had taken hold of me. For some reason I didn’t see it as a glorified studio apartment, on wheels no less, but more as a way to walk my talk. Perhaps, after all, I did fit into that first category and wanted to put to the test my ideals and beliefs of living a simpler lifestyle.

So when I heard about these two women, on my island, building Tiny Homes, I wanted to know more.

Something wriggling on the floor catches my eye and I stop mid-step. A centipede is curled around a mass of moving, translucent objects. She undulates a little and curls in tighter – protectively – as she appears to perceive my presence. I bend over and look closer. Those tiny, squirming beings are centipede babies. For crying out loud, sometimes I feel like I live in an episode of National Geographic in this dismal, temporary, studio apartment. I grab a dustpan and a large piece of cardboard and carefully transport the family outside to a more suitable home.

In 2010 I had a bumper crop of grandchildren. All three of my daughters decided to have a baby within four months of each other, bringing the grand total to six, two each. Michelle and Alicia, my oldest daughters, live in Rochester, New York. My youngest, Chelsea, who had moved to Hawai’i with me in 1994 as an eight-year-old, had recently moved to Rochester with her husband and two children to give the mainland a try. With my whole family now living in Upstate New York, the solid roots I’d put down in Hawai’i were shaken to their core.

Last week, I had narrowly missed another, National Geographic spectacle, with a four-inch cane spider carrying a large white sac. Fortunately, with the aid of a broom, I was able to gently encourage her to give birth in the great outdoors. I’d heard the nightmare story of a friend scaring one, and subsequently, the momma spider abandoned her sac, filled with hundreds of tiny babies, that then scurried to safety – theirs, not hers.

Shortly after Chelsea left for the mainland, I sold my three-bedroom house and moved into this dreary rental with my boxes unpacked. I’m not sure what I was thinking. The naked rafters and beams in the walls attest to this hastily thrown-together abode. It is situated under the home of the pervey landlord. The way he looks me up and down and the inappropriate comments he murmurs under his breath, make me want to take a shower. When I discover he’s a substitute teacher at the high school, I shudder. I just hope they have protocols in place to protect the students.

And the resident cockroach population (I’ll spare you the picture of the cockroaches that we call B52’s), which has migrated down from the landlord’s home above me, is out of control. Amongst other things, they have made their home in my boxes – to be dealt with later. I spend as little time as possible here. Even my terrier MacKenzie is so horrified to be left alone in this place, she yipes and barks non-stop when I’m gone, compelling the landlord to tell me I can’t leave her here by herself. I have to keep telling myself; this is temporary. Let’s just say I am highly motivated to move…somewhere, anywhere by here.

As soon as I sell my business, I will join my family in Rochester – at least this is what I have been telling myself, and them. This is, less of a plan, more of a knee-jerk reaction. With my whole family now on the mainland, it seems like the thing to do. Perhaps my time here is up. The only problem is, I have no idea how to go about selling a massage school – it is not your average business. And so I have done nothing, living for months in a strange limbo, in a crummy studio apartment, surrounded by boxes stacked to the ceiling. My house is sold, my business is not – one foot in, one foot out.