Joe, Who Lived at Home

Everyone and everything is interconnected in this universe. Stay pure of heart and you will see the signs. Follow the signs, and you will uncover your destiny.

-Jeff, Who Lives at Home (2011)

Remember the year you moved home to mom’s basement to write your great American novel? I ask.

My brother holds his beer high, Ah,  yes, to my great American novel. He says.  And to mom’s basement!

It’s Christmastime and our spirits are flying high with the season.

May it be forever filled with at least one adult child. I chime in.  A holy space for regression, a hideout from reality, a temple for do-nothings.

I’ll let the cat out of the bag here. My brother didn’t write his great American novel that year. Actually, it wasn’t even a great American novel. He’s a nerd. Yea, the most loveable nerd I’ve ever met, but let’s just call a book a book.  He was really attempting to craft  The Great American Sci-Fi.  And the way he tells the story never fails to have me rolling on the floor with laughter.

I just wrote the first two chapters over and over again. But I wasn’t willing to edit, like a draft, so I just spent two months erasing and re-writing two chapters. It was horrible.

My brother’s self-awareness delights me, but it also instructs me.

At some point during his subterranean year he took a job at a local cafe,  got a cute girlfriend, and spent some quality time with our mom. Overall, I’d say it was pretty decent year.

It just dawned on me that I’m probably writing this essay because I feel a like I’m metaphorically hanging out in my mom’s basement right these days. Getting divorced, closing a store I owned, and going back to school. I’m exhausted, and spending a lot of time hiding out in self-care practices.

So I’m writing this to remind myself, and anyone else out there going through the same thing. That it’s okay. It’s more than okay.

Sometimes life falls apart. Sometimes we regress physically or metaphorically to our mother’s basements. Maybe we don’t write the book. Or get the job. Maybe we hide out and watch netflix, or hide out and do yoga, or hideout and read great American Sci-Fi novels.

But spring returns. Spring always returns, and we move along to new, and oftentimes better chapters.  As I’m writing this, my brother, well, he’s enjoying the spring in Stockholm where he landed his dream job as video game designer.

If there’s any other lesson to be take from my brother. Self-awareness and humor will take you long way on a basement day.

And, go watch Jeff, Who Lives at Home. It’ll cheer you up.

I promise.

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