I spent a Saturday a few weeks ago over at my sister’s, helping to tear down the garage from hell. It’s been an all summer long process because the thing is a beast of a building, and we had to haul off all the debris ourselves. Frequently, I have found myself stopping, standing in the middle of a pile of broken boards and twisted metal. Where did all of this come from?
It was a poorly built structure that had just enough craftsmanship to last half a century. One wall had an old house door nailed into a hole. Another wall was papered with sides from old fruit crates. By the time we started taking it down, two thirds of the roof had collapsed in, and an inside wall had burned straight through, but still stood behind some plywood. It still functioned as a building, even though it had long since ceased to be “functional.”
As we pushed down part of the old garage frame, exposing a huge, wide open expanse of space that had been covered over for 50 years, it felt like my life. It WAS my life at that moment. But also this tumbling over of the old, and seeing the wide openness behind, feels very true to me right now. And just as that space in their backyard is undefined as of now — its future use not yet determined — so too is a lot of my life.
We pulled the lawn table and chairs into the newly opened space yesterday and sat down for a drink, some pizza, and conversation. I had a bit of a melt-down when a question was asked about my old job, a reminder of how challenging it can be to hang with the uncertainty and instability of the relative world.
But beyond that, there was a quality of spaciousness there I think we all felt — both the actual open space we sat in, but also something deeper. Looking around, everything was there. The beautiful new fence my father and my sister’s boyfriend had built. A pile of dirt, broken glass, and other rubble. The remains of the last third of the garage, waiting to be taken down. A pile of old lumber. A pile of new lumber.
I’ve spent a lot of time in my life trying to build, grow, succeed and maintain, but the flip side is always there, too. Yesterday, it felt abundantly clear to me that no matter how much fussing I do on the surface, building this and tearing down that, life will always be in some kind of transition. I will always contain some of that rubble, some of that broken down shell of a garage. And I need to remind myself again and again that that’s just fine.
Photo Credit
“neon brick” psyberartist @ flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.
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Nice reminder of the continuing cycles Nathan. While this continual birth/death/rebirth cycle is obvious we so easily attach to bits of the wheel and find ourselves turning in space don’t we.