Raucous laughter danced with the pulsating drums of Phil Collins as the party stretched well past midnight. I briefly worried that our neighbors were going to call the police and how embarrassing it was going to be to have to say to the cop, “I’m sorry, officer. Of course we will turn Sussudio down.”
However, there were no complaints that starry, Carolina spring night. Maybe we weren’t as loud as I thought or maybe after 14 months of lockdowns, quarantines, separations and Zooms, the collective we was giving a pass on some late night foolishness.
I was grateful. Although I am comedically lawful, I do come from a long line of outlaws so I’m always appreciative of not having to deal with law enforcement.
However, more so than that I was grateful that after a trying year that on that night all was right, all was good. I was surrounded by some of the great loves of my life in the place that I love most in the world.
By my rough estimate, I lived in 20 different rental homes, apartments and trailers before I graduated from high school. My favorite was a tidy a-frame where I had a room in the basement, complete with a TV with cable. When we lived there, my parents were on a fairly good stretch, by their standards anyway. My mom often fished in the front pocket of her faded Levi’s and produced a dollar or two which I would use to buy pre-packaged cheese danishes and rolls of SweeTarts at the convenience store across the street. Any time that I didn’t have to spend a perforated Food Stamp was a win for me.
However, our time in the cute little white cottage with a porch, along with my parents’ relatively stable run, was short lived. After a particularly heavy rain, the basement flooded, not only ruining the boxes and boxes of Archie comics that I stored on my closet floor but making my room uninhabitable. I was, as was often the case in my childhood, relegated to the couch on the nights that I hadn’t begged my way to my grandmothers.
After my nomadic upbringing, the thought of moving fills me with an aching dread. And, that is why since moving to Charlotte 20 years ago, I have only moved once. Our house has grown up with us. It is where we are raising the most important decision that we ever made.
Our house is not a mansion. It is not in a trendy neighborhood or in a pristine subdivision with a water park worthy pool. Some of the houses in our neighborhood have immaculate landscaping, others have overgrown grass and cars up on blocks. It is a place where I don’t get an HOA fine for putting a bikini and sun hat on an illuminated goat and placing said got in my front yard. And, if my neighbors don’t care for my CrossFit rig being drilled into the top of the driveway they at least keep it to themselves.
So, as I sat out on our sun-weathered deck and watched my daughter and her best friend play cornhole under the lights we had strung as one of my normally reserved friends surprised us by not only declaring her deep, undying love for the man who brought us such hits as “Against All Odds” and “Easy Lover”, but then doing some flawless lip-sync versions of these songs, I realized how far I had come.
I now live in a house that raises up to meet us when the outside world is trying to weigh us down. It is warm. Comfortable. Clean. Quirky. It welcomes the misfits with a hug and gives a knowing nod to those in need of a soft place to land. You will always find snacks and a cold beer. The coffee pot is always ready to spring into action.
It is filled with love and with laughter; with happy times and with caring, loyal, supportive, loud, funny, trustworthy people – and, on occasion with Phil Collins.
Soshally Awkward
Sosha Lewis is a writer whose work has been featured in The Washington Post, Huffington Post, MUTHA Magazine and The Charlotte Observer. She writes about her sometimes wild, sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking past filled with free-lunches, a grimy sports bar, a six foot tall Albino woman who tried to save her teenage soul, felonious, drug addicted parents, an imaginary friend named Blueberry and growing up nestled in the coal-dusted mountains of West Virginia.
