We called it the Mendenhall Home for Homeless Homos. Because who doesn't love alliteration? I've talked about the Mendenhall house before here, and some of the shenanigans that I got into there while in grad school. It was my home away from home while in North Carolina, a place where The Beagle and I could go and not worry about keeping elbows off the table or laughing too loudly or having to remember my best Chi Omega manners in general. It was the house owned by my best friend, Amanda, and her husband (my Non-Husband as we were fond of calling him) James.
They had a motley cast of characters that lived with them in that house over the years, some of them friends from school or from their hometown in Kansas, and some of them because they were displaced due to ignorance and hatred disguised as faith or devotion and needed a place to stay. I think, in the end, that's how most of us ended up there--we didn't have anywhere to land that felt quite right, due to varying circumstances, and Amanda and James took us in and gave us a place to rest, to feel welcome, to find wholeness together, each one of us broken in some way and filling in the gaps for the others. At least that's how I remember it. It always was, for me, a place of healing.
And while I never lived there officially, I was a fixture at that house for the three and a half years I spent in North Carolina. I did continue to knock before walking through their front door (because otherwise my mother might have driven all the way over from East Tennessee to reprimand me), but my "guest" status stopped there. I cleaned the kitchen, walked the dogs, drank the booze, slept on the couch. I even ended up inadvertently sleeping in cat vomit on said couch one night, something that still makes me twitchy. But this was a place that felt like home, a place that was a refuge even and especially during my darkest days of depression.
So why am I waxing poetic about a house that was never rightfully mine? Why, indeed. Tonight I went to my first-ever book club meeting. Some of the girls at work have a casual group, along with some of their friends and those friends' coworkers, who get together once a month to discuss a book that, on average, only about two-thirds of the group has read. But there's wine and dessert and every other female, Oprah-inspired book club cliché you'd like to add. Anyway, I was just thankful to be asked, to be included in a group outside of work that made me feel like I belonged, that maybe there are friendships to be forged up on this vast Mountain anyway.
When I got to the house of the girl who was hosting, there was only one other person there, one of my coworkers. She and the hostess were talking about their upcoming trip to Mexico, and all the while they were putting cheese and crackers on plates and juggling wine glasses. My coworker, the guest, moved through our hostess's kitchen with such ease and confidence that it was like she was simply an extension of our hostess, another appendage to help move things along. I felt like an interloper, a voyeur spying on this relaxed-yet-intimate parlay between two kindred women. And it made me miss my days at the Mendenhall Home. The way I used to move among pugs, cats, roommates, house guests, and hosts, prepping food for dinner and feeling completely at ease.
For some reason I thought that, although it would take time, I would find another friend here in Colorado that would give me that sort of peace and confidence, that other home where I could be an extension of the inhabitants during the rush of prepping for a dinner party. I think I realize now, though, that Mendenhall was a special place, full of special people. I have a kindred spirit in Amanda, and she is definitely one of three people in the world that I could go without seeing for months or even years, and know that we could pick our friendship back up as though no time had passed. Even so, knowing that and having her only 4 blocks away was so much easier than putting that theory to the test across 1800 miles. It's lonely, sometimes, up here on The Mountain without her.
Still. I trudge on. I go to book club, where I have engaging discussions with interesting women about books that I never thought of to read. I practice yoga and meditation, because I wouldn't be a true Coloradan if I didn't. I play with The Beagle and explore this beautiful valley and wonder what else lies beyond these mountains in the painted dessert of the west. And I'm having more fun than I ever imagined doing all of these things.
But sometimes I still wish I could be back at the Mendenhall House to share these adventures with my friend Amanda, homeless homo or not.
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