You Are Where You Live
In the last two months, my life has changed drastically. I’ve been caring for a terminally ill family member (henceforth to be known as The Patient) and will be doing so for the foreseeable future. This necessitated an abrupt, overnight relocation from a rural area on coast of NC to the Raleigh/Durham sprawl 300 miles away.
After extended stays in hotels and a brief stopover in a family friend’s rental house, I recently found a place I can call my own – well, at least for the duration of a six month lease — where The Patient and I can live during his treatment.
I really like my new home — it’s a gated townhouse community with attractive landscaping, tidy lawns, all the amenities and well-designed, bright, airy, spacious 2 and 3 bedroom units. It’s quiet, safe and darn pretty. And if that isn’t enough, my neighbors are exceptionally friendly and pleasant, too.
Who could ask for more — especially at this moment in time. It’s a weird and disconcerting experience to care for a dying person, and I passionately embrace any vestige of normalcy and stability, even if it is only superficial.
And this place is perfect, really — so perfect, in fact, that it reminds of the community where Jim Carrey’s character lived in The Truman Show. Any day now, I expect my fellow residents to heartily greet me with, “Good morning, and in case I don’t see you, good afternoon, good evening and good night!”
When we moved in, The Patient was pleased with our digs – or so he seemed, at least up until last Friday. The home health nurse who comes to check his vital signs asked how he liked his new home.
He froze her with an arctic gaze and disdainfully remarked, “It’s a ticky-tacky community chock-a-block with ticky-tacky little houses.”
Okay, he’s not a well man. Maybe that was one of his bad days when nothing made him happy. It’s understandable.
But if we are what we eat, as the health nuts tell us, and we are what we drive, as the hawkers of luxury cars insist, then our dwellings must say volumes about us. Which simply means: if this is a ticky-tacky community with ticky-tacky little houses, then I guess I am a ticky-tacky little person.
Or maybe just a desperate one…
– phoebe kate