You Can Go Home Again

Sometimes it’s good to get a different perspective. And since you are used to newsletters from us, we thought you might like to hear from another voice in the O’Connor family. While she is still “a mass of contradictions in my once peaceful world”, she is no longer the wee one lovingly chronicled in the song Dusty in My Heart. Dusty is heading off to college this week to begin her second year at Seattle Pacific University. We will stay in touch by web-cam and email, but we are missing her already.

—Michael & Sally O’Connor

YOU CAN GO HOME AGAIN
October 2008

by Dusty Rose O'Connor

Perspective: The faculty of seeing all the relevant data in a meaningful relationship. A mental view or prospect

It's funny how things change. Especially when you ask God to step in and change them for you.

I did not want to come back.

They had said we’d never go back.

You can’t make me!

The strange thing about hearing bad news is that the larger it is, the more time is required to fully comprehend it.

When I first heard that my parents were considering moving, it was right before I left for college in Seattle. As long as it was even a consideration, I counted it as one of the many stressors that began piling up on me. This was, after all, “the old house”.

Really, it’s a unique situation. My Grandma Betty, Mom’s mom, owned the house on St. Clair Ave, the one that I grew up in. She agreed to rent it to my parents. I have only a few good memories of the place, as it was the stage for much of our family’s dysfunction. When Grandma and Grandpa died, Mom was able to use the money from their estates to make a down payment on a new house on Costello Ave, three miles away. At eleven years old, all I could think about was how great it was going to be to have my own room.

My parents retained ownership of the St. Clair house and rented it out. I was sure we’d never go back, and seven years slipped by with room to spare and space to stretch out in.

The bad news became reality around my 19th birthday, while I was away at college. Sometime before or after, my parents informed me over the phone that we had to sell the Costello house and move back.

The strange thing is, after all the anxiety and fear, my response was calm and collected. I said to Mom, “Maybe this is God. We were able to move to a larger house so we could spread out and heal. Now we’re moving back to a smaller house, only this time we’ve healed enough to come closer together.”

But time waits for no college student, and when I flew home, I was confronted with the finer details of purging the things I didn’t really need and packing the rest of my life in bins and boxes. I’d taken the liberty of sorting my books over Spring Break and packing the ones I wanted to keep, but I was losing a full two shelves of books. Perhaps you do not understand what two shelves of books means to me. Losing reading material, to me, is like having multiple root canals. I went around my room, sorting the various knickknacks and figurines I’d acquired, as well as every loose paper I had. Stuffed animals were set aside for the Salvation Army. Scrapbooking materials thrown out. Drawers emptied. With each passing day, my room began to look more and more deserted. Down came my paintings and pictures, maps and posters. White walls stared at me, blankly. I swept the floor spotlessly clean and scrubbed stubborn streaks from the wall as furniture was taken outside to be sold at our moving sale.

Two or three nights before we removed ourselves for good, I stood in the bathroom, clutching a broom. In an even tone, but with a heart that was spitting mad, I said, “God, I can’t change my perspective on this. Change it for me. You can have it.” I continued with sweeping and cleaning, figuring it would take several sessions with a therapist to get past this anger. I couldn’t believe, after all God had promised, he would send us—me—back to the place where so much crud had happened. The place where I learned terror from raised voices. The place where a single dropped crumb meant an army of ants. The place where I had to worry about being taken away by Child Services because of how loud my sister screamed when her nails were clipped.

I had known for a while that people from our church had volunteered labor to fix up the St. Clair house. I’d even seen some of it in stages of restoration, which encouraged me. But the day I walked in hauling boxes of our stuff, I was floored.

What used to be old, yellow-and-white scuffed linoleum was laminate wood flooring. Two bedrooms had dark blue carpeting. The walls—formerly devoid of any semblance of color—were a gentle, soothing blue. The cabinets had been repainted, the old yellow kitchen counter retiled, and the bathroom upgraded. The living room, which had always borne the brunt of the extreme temperatures due to its lack of insulation, now had a false ceiling with insulation between it and the real one. The old doorway to that room, which had been rotted out so badly by the termites it was an earthquake hazard, had been completely restored.

And it wasn’t just renovations. An anonymous donor sent over a 4 year old water heater to replace our 16 year old one. Another family donated air conditioning units. We were given a freezer and a loft bed for Bonnie, who promptly inscribed the giver’s name on her bed with permanent marker.

I looked around me, and I felt excitement. Dare I say it, joy. I saw the house was in rough shape. There were piles of junk all over the front and side yards. We were wading through boxes day and night. But with every box removed, and every pile set on the curb for bulk pickup, satisfaction grew. We pulled together as a family to settle in and make our home liveable.

My parents’ bedroom/office housed two computers, a fan, a printer, a modem, and various lamps. Due to the bizarre and ancient circuitry of the household, my attempt at changing a lightbulb in that room culminated in a circuit fried faster than a fourth place chicken at a county fair. Extension cords were brought out to feed power to the computers, and I smiled inwardly. I couldn’t believe how calmly I was taking this. I am, after all, a bit of a computer addict.

During the weeks that passed, my good friend Sierra, who often came to hang out, came up with the idea of overhauling the front yard. Everything had overgrown, and many of the bushes in our front yard housed black widows and all sorts of creepy crawlies. At first I was reluctant, but Sierra can be persuasive, and I caught the excitement. The idea of improving our yard in visible ways intrigued me. We set to work with a shovel and a hoe, hacking up dead plants and uprooting most of the chinaberry bushes. The ground smelled awful, and the soil was extremely poor, but I was enjoying myself.

About a week or so later, Mom noticed the bite marks on Shannon’s legs. She began inspecting our furniture and beds, and came to the awful conclusion that we had fleas.

Fleas? In our house? We don’t even have a pet!

For the first half of that day, every itch and every twinge was a flea. I’d never even seen one, and expected some microscopic menace that could jump from the floor to the ceiling in a second. When I finally saw one and realized they could be caught, a strange thing began to happen. I stopped being afraid. Me, the arachnophobe, the one who is utterly incapacitated by large swarms of tiny insects. Not only had my fear of fleas fled, I began to make a game of it. Find the flea. Look all up and down yourself for the little black dot. If in the car, drop it out the window. If in the house, drown it down the sink drain. While I winced at the sight of Shannon’s chewed up legs (She had the worst time of it) I enjoyed my private game.

Our theory, so far, is that by disturbing ground that hadn’t been bothered for seven years, we accidentally provoked a flea infestation. So, unfortunately, further excavation has been postponed until winter.

During all this, my inner amusement grew. I’d once been with Mom in a concert where everything went wrong, and I’d laughed at the Enemy’s blatant tactics. This time, again, I laughed. For the first time in months, I remembered God was good. After all, he’d sent us help for the house. He’d sent us air conditioning and a freezer. He was supplying our needs and supporting my parents in their decisions. What are fried circuits and fleas in comparison?

In retrospect, I realized something very important. That God doesn’t grant just what we ask for. I asked for Him to change my perspective on the move, and He went beyond. He took my anger and broken emotion over the house and transformed it into anticipation. He opened my eyes to see opportunity, not lack thereof. The possibility to transform what was into something better.

For the first time in months I knew God was good.

One final realization came to me, more slowly than the rest. I’d forgotten it in the time of spacious halls and rooms. I was home. I’d grown up in this house. In spite of all the flaws and fears, I knew this place. As I write this, I know that I will have a harder time leaving this house behind and fly to Seattle than I did leaving the Costello house.

Renovations on the St. Clair house continue. Two ceiling lights have been replaced by ceiling fans with lights—another gift of appliance and labor. New smoke detectors have replaced dying ones. Fire-hazard wires have been covered and made safe. The front and back yards have been cleared of remaining debris, and we continue to flood and poison the fleas out of their settlements. Most recently, a water line has been run across the kitchen, around a hall, through a cupboard, and over to our fridge. Hooray for cold water and ice! Thanks be to God, and blessings on those he sent to help.

God is good, no matter what.

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