Growing up I didn’t have much space of my own. I spent most of my time at my grandparents house which was like Penn Station. Family members were always passing through. Picking up food. Dropping off kids. Checking their mail. The house was also the Post Office, as well as the H+R Block. My grandmother was caretaker to not only me and my cousins, but to a slew of other neighborhood kids. Meals were eaten around a crowded table, a multitude of legs dangling off the banquet benches. Going home with my mom at night didn’t give me any respite. I shared a room with my older brother in a small subterranean two bedroom apartment. There was no concept of private space. I used to sit on my bed and open up an umbrella over my head. Then I’d drape a huge blanket over the top creating a canopy which only covered the top half of my body. I hung a little flashlight from the stretcher of the umbrella and read books until I fell asleep. I was fierce in claiming what space I could. In a dispute over territory, I once took a pen and scrawled my name on everything in the room that was mine, including my half of The Complete Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tales. Volume 1 belonged to me.
There was a period of time, where there was work being done on my grandparents’ roof and a huge extendable ladder became a somewhat permanent fixture in the stairwell where the roof could be accessed. What else is a kid to do, but climb it? It was my own private playground (albeit a dangerous one). Much of the housing in San Francisco is packed very tightly. In my neighborhood, the houses were all smashed together so that there was no space between the houses at all. Up on the roof I could run the whole block across the roofs of every house on that side of the street. The roofs were all covered in a layer of gravel. So walking up there made a really loud crunching noise. I wonder what folks in those houses must have thought hearing that occasional ruckus. There wasn’t much to do up there. There wasn’t even a chair to sit on. But I was alone and it was quiet. So I just hung out for a while and watched the fog roll in through the Guadalupe Canyon.
Now that I’m all grown up, not much has changed in terms of space. I still live in small quarters and have been inside for almost a year now with my teenage daughter and my partner. There are days when I want to pull out an umbrella, hide inside, and pretend that I’m alone. In the first week of January, we ended our BIPOC writing workshop with a goal setting session. One of the questions was: what do I need to be successful for my own writing? We were to think of concrete things like time, better chair, more snacks, or a weekend away. For me it was space.
My living space is something that I’ve always wanted to be more intentional about, but also I’ve never had much time, money, or motivation to change it. Pre-pandemic, most of my life was lived outside of this space, so it was always something I could kind of ignore. We always made due with the furniture we had. We bought a few things along the way. We made it work. Somewhat. After stay-at-home, I rearranged some things. My desk area got a bit of a revamp, but not too much changed. The pandemic lines at the Home Depot as folks scrambled to make their spaces more functional were just not appealing. So whatever, we carried on. But it was that damn NYT sponsored article that kept popping up about a family of four in Brooklyn who was making 660 sq ft. work for them. My space is almost twice that size. So I’m feeling a sudden urge to change everything in here, just like I got that sudden urge to pull up that elephant bush from the planter box (see newsletter #10). Some things in here have got to go.
I’m not sure why it took nearly a whole year to figure that one of the first things we needed was a room divider. My workspace is in my bedroom. So this makes space sharing cumbersome. We’ve been making due with turning my camera off, if my partner needed to access the bedroom. Or folks at work just got used to him passing through the frame occasionally. Also, it had become quite normal for anyone in my professional life to know what my bed looked like. I remember this place in Chinatown sold room dividers for really cheap and while passing by one day, I impulsively picked one up and it has changed my whole life. It is my umbrella with a blanket. Not only can my partner pass through the room in a towel during my meetings undetected, but I can get up in the wee hours of the morning, turn on a lamp, and get to work without as much disturbance to him. Though it's just a wooden frame covered with paper, it has made my work space and writing life feel more intentional, which seems to be a running theme in these few weeks. It is easier to turn off mom brain, wife mode, and a hell of a lot easier to not want to take a nap because I can’t see my bed. This week I took my calls with a nice candle burning and a vase full of flowers in the background.
And now, the whole place is getting re-organized. I have several unopened boxes of new furniture. We will have a clothes rack to hang clothes which aren’t quite dirty enough to put in the hamper, but not clean enough to go back in the closet. Currently, they get piled up on top of the god awful chair which was acquired from a neighbor’s yard sale many years ago. The chair has got to go. And, oh god! The shelving unit in the living room that only exists to hold bullshit. That’s gonna go too. After that everything is gonna have to Tetris its way into a new configuration because I am leaving this makeshift life behind.
The balcony always gets work done in the spring. Things get pulled and flowers get planted. But this year, I’m putting a bistro set out there. I’ve wanted one since last year, but everyone else had the same idea and a bistro set could not be found in the first six months of the pandemic. I didn’t feel like ordering something that would take months to arrive, so I did what I always do--make due with whatever. But I’m ahead of the game this year and I ordered one while the weather was still cold enough that they’d be in stock. In the before times, I could be found at Philippe’s at 7:30am reading and writing amidst the chatter of Chinatown elders and retired city workers. Now the balcony is the only space beside the bathroom, where I can truly be alone. (And even in there, I still get no peace.) So I’ve taken the rickety table to the trash and replaced it with a proper set of table and chairs. I’m excited to go out there and read a book, sip my tea, and take two puffs of a cigarette before I start feeling sick and throw it out.
I don’t recall what triggered that event in my childhood that made me furiously write my name on everything, but I remember the urgency I felt to make space for myself. It’s one that is very much alive now, as we are going on one year of being inside. I’m really grateful to share space with people of my choosing. And I’m excited to make this a place I can enjoy, a space of intention, so that I can write my ass off this spring.
Other stuff:
This piece in the NYT that follows 3 working mothers during the pandemic was so triggering to read because there is so much of my actual life reflected in it. I’ve wanted to write about what it’s like to parent in these times. I figured it would happen by now, but I’m not ready yet.
Women Who Submit has a new membership orientation for its LA chapter on Feb 13th at 10am. I’m gonna lean on this group this to help me actually get this work out. Check out a local chapter in your area here.
That’s all I’ve got for now!
See you next week.
~j9
the chair has got to go! ;)
Finding ways to be alone has been one of the most challenging things for me these past 11 months. You articulated how I've felt so beautifully!