Shortly before moving in, I mentioned to Kim that we should be placing bets on certain probables: how long before the first ant infestation, the first major leak, the first mouse...
The ant infestation took about two days. In fact, when I opened my computer earlier today, the little guys came crawling out from it's technological innards. They are on our counter and in our cupboards. They are crawling around the sink and across the floor. We put out ant traps, so now we just try to laugh and hope for the best. That, and store our more tantalizing food in double ziplock bags.
The leak...well, yesterday it rained. Correction: it poured. I stood inside the trailer and watched the deluge pummel the dirt road leading around our trailer park, turning dust into mud and potholes into puddles (lakes?). Walking down our short hallway, I noticed that the rain was pouring somewhere else: down the inside of our back door. (Isn't rain supposed to pour down the outside of back doors?) Not far from the back door (because, in a trailer, nothing is far from anything), water was pooling at the base of one of our windows. This particular window, you see, is made of some flimsy plastic that has warped away from the weather stripping. Excellent.
As for the mouse, we have yet to see one, but a glance under the bathroom sink reveals a nicely gnawed hole through the particle board. I'm sure our paths will cross eventually.
Yes, life in the trailer park is an ever interesting adjustment. Broken ovens, holes in the floor hidden by thin carpet, an all-too tenacious stench, and a floor so slanted that one can place a ball on one end of our bunk beds (which ended up being too small for our mattresses) and watch it quickly roll to the other end. In these first weeks, each days is made up of a million different moments of shifting paradigms, opportunities to surrender our right to comfort. Each such surrender is followed by the realization that there will always be one remaining gap between me and my neighbors: I choose to give up comforts, while many of them have never been given the chance to embrace them. May I never grow so cocky as to think I can fully understand.
Still, don't get me wrong. In the quiet moments, when we are sitting on the floor (our furniture consists of a step ladder and an old office chair) with windows open to the cool evening air...in these moments I am just so thankful: thankful for the kids we've met, for the family across the street, for the ways that we are learning to live more simply. It is a dream realized, a journey we are excited to take together, living in community.
Even if it means that community includes a bazillion tiny ants.
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2 comments:
Fantastic glimpse for us Katie. Why do you suppose it's so hard for us to live in community with people we attend church with? There may be socio-economic walls separating me (in my Briargate townhome) from the folks who call your trailer-park home...but I personally would rather tackle the drive across town than to continue to attempt climbing over the razor-wire walls found guarding the hearts (and mouths) of many who I sit next-too during Pierced. Yourself included.
Any mice rice yet? Those little brown pellets of love left by your furry friends from down under... Any spiders to cuddle with? I've heard that trailers are nice places to find Brown Recluse. I don't know if you have them down there in the Springs. In light of the living situation I am glad to hear that things are going so splendidly with the neighbors.
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