House

I look out the window at the traffic that has been crawling by for hours along our normally quiet and quaint street, sautéing mushrooms and butter in a pan, the melted fat pooling on one side of the skillet because the kitchen floor tilts toward the street. This is a funny house I’m renting, the foundation cracked in several places, each room slanting in different directions, like a circus attraction.

“House,” I say out loud as I remove the pan from the burner, “what the hell is going on out there?”

I’ve never seen this many cars on the road, all going toward my “real” home, Santa Cruz. It’s Memorial Day Sunday, and I’m due to join Walt on the property for dinner. I’d thought the traffic would be gone by now, but it’s not showing any signs of stopping. It appears everyone is headed to the one place I’m not sure I want to return.

House says nothing. Why would it? This home was built before the advent of cars, and it’s seen its share of traffic jams as the old stagecoach trails that led over the mountain between Santa Cruz and Los Gatos gradually turned into highways. There’s a picture in one of the stores downtown of Santa Cruz Avenue, the main drag here in Los Gatos, which shows a typical Saturday in Los Gatos before Highway 17 was built; cars lined down the street for miles, the ends of surfboards hanging out the windows. It was hot then, as it is today. I want to bring my husband dinner, but I don’t want to get in traffic. To be honest, I’d rather stay here, on this side of the “hill.” I have little time left in Los Gatos before we pack up from this rental and return to the other side of the hill, heading to the beach ourselves.

Before the fire, I’d never dreamed of living in Los Gatos, the town where some of the wealthiest of the Bay Area live. I loved to visit though. The restaurants are divine, shops spectacular, they have beautiful parks and dog walking trails, and my boys loved to visit the Apple store when they were little. As I came out of my dazed stupor after our home burned, one of the first things I had to do was find shelter, something that was already horrific before 800 homes were lost to the flames. Santa Cruz is a housing nightmare. I called over a dozen different listings that first weekend, leaving my number and hoping they’d call back. Unfortunately, not a single Santa Cruz property manager answered my plea.

I texted everyone I knew. Not a single person could help me either. Rents started increasing and I felt a second shock of helplessness, as if losing my home again. During one of my panicked moments, I recalled Los Gatos, the beautiful town over the hill. A search revealed a few options and I left desperate messages. The very next day, a Sunday even, one of the realtors called me back. Thus on the Monday after I lost my home at Big Trees, I found myself driving Highway 17 over the mountain to the gleaming town of Los Gatos. The first house I visited was on the east side of town on Jackson Street. Given that’s also my eldest son’s name, I took it as a good sign. Unfortunately, the home was too small. I thanked the realtor and got in my car, checking my email to see if any new leads had popped up. Miraculously, a new Los Gatos rental on the west side had just listed and I texted the contact. She replied instantly and said she could meet me there at one in the afternoon. It was eleven. I would have to kill two hours, but that’s not hard to do in a town like this. I grabbed a latte and sat in the town park, where the railroad depot had stood almost a century before.

Sitting under the redwoods in the park gave me hope. Even here, there were Big Trees. I strolled along Santa Cruz Avenue and bought myself a new dress and shoes, since I didn’t own a dress nor nice shoes. At one in the afternoon, I headed to Glen Ridge Avenue and stood outside the home, enchanted at first sight, trembling. I didn’t want to be there, but if I had to, I wanted it to be in this house. Within a moment, the realtor arrived and I signed immediately.

House has a lovely red door, but the real beauty is inside. Given the time period in which it was built, the ceilings are gorgeous, curved up in the corners, original crown molding, built in cabinetry in the elegant dining room, just screaming for a dinner party. The oak floors are also from the early 1900s. I could imagine the holiday events hosted over the span of a century—the hemlines of skirts getting shorter with each decade while the music shifted from a live fiddler or piano to the radio. The instant I set foot inside, I felt safe and calm. House was going to take care of us.

The rents here aren’t more than Santa Cruz, but the town is so much more beautiful. I love the clean streets, the well kept yards, and the rose gardens along every street. There’s a lot of home pride here, and while most of these people hire others to do their gardening, I’ve found that in any direction I head to walk, there is something lovely to discover—neighborhood parks and benches next to trees that must have special meaning to the people that have lived here. There’s also an mix of housing; from the overpriced old homes like House, to duplexes, to apartment buildings, Los Gatos has done a decent job providing housing for different income levels. Even better, I can walk down any street alone in the dark, something I’ve never been able to do in my entire life.

Early on, I set the goal of eating at every restaurant we could walk to. The other day, I checked the list and sure enough, there are only two left. Often I’ll take Evelyn, my well-behaved Aussie, out for an afternoon latte in the park to watch the people go by. This is a dog town, they even have doggy entrees on the menus. Los Gatos is also the best place to land if you have to rebuild a wardrobe. Between the sidewalk sales and the Happy Dragon thrift store, I’ve created a post-fire look the pre-fire Nicole would envy. Here’s the secret if you lose all of your belongings; rich lady thrift stores are every wildfire survivor’s friend.

But there’s something more to it than this. It’s not the fun, but rather the energy of this place, and this house in particular. Old homes have personalities. The stories of every person who has lived here still move about the space. Even though its foundation is cracked in several places, House is strong. It’s built to last, surviving not one but two major earthquakes. The neighborhood trees may not be giant redwoods, but they have been good to me. It wasn’t until just after Christmas when I realized that perhaps the real reason I fled “over the hill” after the fire was because this town reminds me of home—of the midwestern world I left thirteen years ago for the golden coast. Due to the pandemic, I couldn’t go home to receive comfort from my family after the fire, so I found the closest thing to it. The white picket fences, gardens, and neighborhood cats are familiar to me.

I look out the window at the traffic, all headed to Santa Cruz, and feel a chill run down my spine. The people out my window are willing to sit in that gridlock to visit the paradise from which I was cast so unexpectedly. I think of the chapter in Braiding Sweetgrass where author Robin Wall Kimmerer compares the Christian creation story with the one of her own native people—Eve vs. Skywoman. I was raised in the story of Eve, one of exile from the garden of Eden. Cast from her paradise to live forever on a harsh planet. Skywoman, in contrast, fell from the sky, sent from heaven carrying nothing but a bundle of seeds, that she might create paradise on a planet waiting for her gift.

As I consider the hot, dry landscape that is now my home in the Santa Cruz mountains, I wonder—am I Eve or Skywoman? Eve is the story of my upbringing, but was I cast out of paradise, or was I sent here to help create paradise after the fire? I never liked the Eve story, even as a little girl I doubted the message of worthlessness that the Church fed us. A life on my knees begging forgiveness for the sins of characters in a mythology never made sense. What if instead I am Skywoman, called to plant seeds on a land in need of my gifts? It sounds better, but as I look at the traffic headed over the hill, I wonder, what if Skywoman had said no thanks, I’m not going to jump from paradise with these seeds, leave everything I know, and work the land. I think I’d rather stay here in Los Gatos, sipping my lattes.

Initially, this was only going to be a six month stay. A couple on the verge of retirement bought House last year and have plans to remodel it. In February, they let me know I could stay until the end of June. That meant I had a bit longer in this lovely town, and more time to try and find a rental back in the Santa Cruz area. I started looking and even then, the results were dismal. It’s incredibly hard to find dog friendly rentals in that town and my heart began to sink with the inevitable déjà vu of last August. Without any clear leads, I sat down one day and asked the House for advice.

“What should I do?”

“Go to the beach,” the house answered.

“Beach?”

I thought for a moment, then went to the computer as I understood the advice—check out beach rentals. I don’t have any furniture, so an extended stay in a vacation home was ideal. Besides, Santa Cruz has more vacation rentals than it does regular households. Immediately, I found a cute home in Capitola, only a five minute walk to the beach. The woman on the phone said it was pet friendly and available starting early July, but unfortunately, it had a renter in it for the month of August. I could move in, move out two weeks later, stay in a hotel for a month, then move back in. Sounded complicated. I let her know that wasn’t an option and asked her to call me if something else came through. I contacted a few other vacation rental companies, but they weren’t sure what they’d have available this summer. It was only February, I was calling a bit early.

As I went to sleep that night, I asked House to help me find our next rental. A home that could hold us as it has held us. The next morning, the woman from the Capitola rental called; the August reservation had been cancelled and we could have the home for a year. I was unable to go inside, it had renters, but I drove the neighborhood and checked out the exterior. As I pulled up, I saw the red door and knew this was it. I signed the next day and locked in the rent for the year. Good thing I did, as the housing market has become even more grotesque; furnished rentals in Santa Cruz are now going for thousands more a month that what I’ve signed for. I’m so grateful I listened to House.

Homes are much more than buildings. They are the places where the threads of human destiny are woven. Houses are the containers of domestic life. It’s terrifying when you lose your shelter for any reason; whether wildfire, divorce, or the end of a lease. Being homeless in a town where homelessness is as common as teen-aged acne is painful, to say the least. Yet even with this beach house blessing, I’m scared to leave Los Gatos, because moving out of here and back over the hill puts me that much closer to the reality of returning to the land. What was once a green, dripping wet rainforest is now a barren field of dirt, dust devils, sun burning your skin, with nowhere to hide. Worse, there’s no communication system up there, no way to know if another fire is on its way, or if your husband is okay while he works alone in the heat with machinery that could kill him. There are no neighbors to help should the worst happen, every house is gone.

I took Evelyn for a latte today and we sat in the same park as I had nine months ago while I waited to meet House. It’s different now; back then the sky was orange as California burned in every direction, the air quality so poor, most were inside. The streets had also been emptier, now there’s traffic again as people have begun to lift their covid lockdowns. I watch a group of boys playing tag. I’ve seen them before—I’ve been visiting this park often with Evelyn—I think they’re a covid-homeschool-pod. Their play has cheered me up during the lonelier days of my exile. They’re the age my boys were when we moved here from Illinois. They say that losing one’s home to disaster brings up all sorts of issues from your past, particularly housing insecurity. My sons have always had a home, but I did rip them from their lives at an early age to travel across the country in pursuit of the California dream. As these boys chase each other under the shade of the redwoods in the park, I think back to those early days here and wonder how the fire is affecting my sons. They haven’t said much, but then again, they’ve always kept things to themselves. I don’t think they want to worry me. Still, it must matter that the House in the Big Trees that Jack found is gone.

I think of House in Los Gatos and my throat tightens. I have only one month left here, but it will be filled with many duties; moving Jackson home from college only to move out of House one week later only to move into the beach house. In between the two leases is a vulnerable two-weeks of “homelessness” in which we travel to the Midwest to see our parents for the first time since we lost House in the Big Trees. I wish I could stay here in this “normal” place. I’m sure the beach will be quite healing, but Santa Cruz is a different beast. There is beauty beyond compare, but also a darkness. Next to the vacation rentals, empty second and third homes of the wealthy, and homes currently for sale and in need of remodeling yet going for $300K over asking price, are shanty towns, growing every day despite the attempts by the city council to sweep them under the rug somewhere. There’s an electrical grid that must be powered off for fear it will burn down the town. There are roads with gaping wounds, falling literally down the mountainside, unrepaired for years. Los Gatos is a place where the wealthy flaunt it, Santa Cruz is a place where the wealthy hide behind their boho clothes and pretend to be progressive while fighting against every apartment complex or affordable housing proposal. As I walk along the charming streets of Los Gatos with Evelyn in the heat of this first day of June, I pass at least five apartment complexes. If these folk, some of the richest in the world, can still sell their homes for $3 million even though they’re surrounded by apartments and rentals, I’m fairly sure the same could happen in Santa Cruz, one of the hottest housing markets in the nation. I wish they would act, because since the fire the failures in our housing and infrastructure are getting harder to bear. I think before the fire I could turn my head from the issues literally screaming at me from the street corner in drunken rage, but now some part of me has been burned away and everything is so raw. Especially the cost of housing and the homelessness it has created.

That’s one thing House doesn’t have going for it—the price. However, each time I consider the fact that the landlords spent over $2 million on it and still have to remodel it completely, the structure gently reminds me that the wealthy may play their games, but House has no part in it. House exists to hold the space for life to unfold. The rules humans make are not House’s concern. Neither is disaster, which House has also endured. This House has been good to me and I know somehow it helped me find our beach house the same way the house on Robles Dr. called to my son all those years ago when he begged me, at the age of nine, to check Zillow one more time for the home in Bonny Doon that he knew was waiting for us. There’s magic in life that we can’t explain. I imagine that’s the same magic that propelled Skywoman as she leapt from her home in paradise to fall to the Earth. There’s a web of life, a destiny, in which we all live, including the homes we build to shelter us.

I’ll miss House. I’m so grateful we met and I’ll never forget the shelter that caught me as I fell from the mountain into its safe embrace.