Was it architect/philosopher Michael Alexander that said a person really only uses 400 sq ft of any given living structure?
Living in my 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom home built in 1940, Santa Fe, NM, I was acutely aware of all the space I never used. It was used to neatly arrange my belongings but nothing else. I nor my son "lived" in any of those parts of the house. Our stuff inhabited it.
After seven donations to St. Vincent de Paul, Salvation Army, one two-day yard sale and several "giftings" to friends, I have managed to fit what is left into a 600 sq. ft apartment in Asheville, NC.
Now this is a bit of an exaggeration. I still have several places that are inhabited by my belongings: belongings I have lived perfectly comfortably without using for decades and belongings I have only recently relegated to storage.
So why hang on to it?
I'll get to that in a minute...or not....
What I am so pleased with is how little I and my son really need.
We cook on a two-burner hot-plate. We bake in a 1 cu ft convection/toaster oven. We have three shelves for dry food and a refrigerator full of the freshest produce I've seen since living in California.
The only time I "panic" about not having "enough" is when I consider my son. Entering a fairly affluent private school, I find myself worrying that his friends will make fun of him for not having the latest, greatest gadget, and that he has only one shoe box full of lego as opposed to several trunks full.
Thankfully, when I have a thought of that nature, I take a look at him playing: he doesn't know that he has less - or more, for that matter - than anyone else. He does know precisely what he does have (i.e. the tiniest of the tiny legos will go missing and he will know it. Baffling.)
We share a bedroom. My bed miraculously "floats" 7 feet above his twin. It's simple and simply cool.
And then we share the bathroom.
And yet, in this space efficient 600 sq ft apartment, there is still space I have not really used. That is the approximate 30 sq. ft of loft space next to my bed that I had imagined I would use as my writing space. Nope. Not happening. Instead, all that time I imagined I needed to be "away" in order to write or do anything for myself computer-wise is done right here on the couch in the presence of my son. I need not to sequester myself away in a room somewhere but I simply need to say, "It's mommy's turn to do somethings for herself."
The first week...well, we had some struggles.
But now, going into week three, we are in a grove. He gets it. I get it. I am embarrassed to admit how conditioned I am to "retreat" (that term is so often and wrongly only attributed to men in the post-Men are from Mars; Women are from Venus era.)
Thing is humans like to retreat. And modern world like lends itself to everyone "retreating" from the bombardment and onslaught of media, only to hide away in tiny offices or bedrooms to plug back into a one-on-one media onslaught as represented by YouTube, Facebook and general internet surfing. It's ridiculous really; we retreat from each other in order to "plug-in" to one another artificially.
I understand and welcome the need to be alone, to spend time with people other than the ones we live with or work with...but what I am really sensing right now as I share this paired-down space with my son, is the need to live together and make space for each other...not the other way around.
Up until this moment, I think I believed that each of us was alone and that it was by choice that we made space for each other in each other's lives. But now I see that is an illusion: the illusion of modern American civilization, and so harshly lived out in the desert land of the Southwest: each person holding onto so desperately and vehemently to the things they have knowing if they share it, they will die of thirst...literally and figuratively.
What I am experiencing so acutely here in the fecund mountains of North Carolina is that life is quite the opposite (and I knew this very well while living in the Southwest but had not the resources to experience it differently) is we do live together: even if in neighboring houses. We live together, and though actions always speak louder than words, it is nice to speak, to ask for what I need, to have my son ask for what he needs, and not only to be heard, but to then have the resources to access what is needed.
And to ask for space from a six year old while occupying only 560 sq ft of a 600 sq ft apartment is more about role modeling the ability to find that space within without having to remove myself physically and indulge in a separation that I previously believed I and all of humanity was entitled to. Not the case.
This is a paradigm shift for sure.
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