35 HOUSES
the solo adventure of a lifetime
Think you're escaping and run into yourself.
Longest way round is the shortest way home.
James Joyce
What was your first memory? Not those misleading, photo album memories, framed in white and slightly faded. Something you remember with all of your senses. Mine is waking up on a polished parquet floor with a scratchy, army-issue blanket covering me and my sister. Light floods in through a bare window onto a little pile of M&Ms next to my pillow. The place feels completely unfamiliar, and there’s an electric sense of imminence, of promise in the air—I still get the same feeling every time I wake up in a new place.
That morning in Missouri was almost 51 years ago, and since then I have lived in almost as many houses as I have made trips around the sun. “35 houses?”, they say. “How is that possible?!?” I know, I know, it’s mad. Some of my moves were fremdbestimmt, as the Germans say, decided for me rather than by me. But even when it was my call, I never could quite get the hang of staying in one place. I was fickle and easily swayed, always hovering, rarely landing.
Things changed when we moved to Dublin in 2011. Putting down roots was not something I instinctively knew how to do, but with the help of some great friends, a 1960s fixer-upper and my proverbial Irish village, we built community and raised two beautiful children here. I grew my freelance business; my husband grew fruit trees; we got a dog. This place, almost without my realizing it, became home.
Lately, though, everything is different. The kids are leaving the nest. Retirement (when? where? how?) is looming. This body doesn’t feel quite as invincible as it used to. And all of those one-of-these-days, before-you-die dreams have an urgency they never did before. I am apparently not—if my feed is any indication—unique. There is an entire mid-life industrial complex cashing in on this unmooredness. But as my certainties slowly unravel, no self-help books, seminars or supplements seem adequate to the task.
The antidote to this “slow, brutal unraveling”, according to Brené Brown, is curiosity. In her words, curiosity about yourself and the world is a “superpower for the second half of our lives”. What would that look like for me, a former Army brat turned European wanderer turned trailing spouse? Could revisiting all my former houses bring me some clarity? Or at the very least a bit of adventure? Whatever that means for a comfort-craving 55-year-old. So, I decided to make 2024 *my* year. A year to retrace my steps to all 14 stateside and 21 European former homes. A year to renew old friendships, put on my gumshoes to solve forgotten mysteries and make some long overdue amends. Who knows? Maybe I’ll even run into myself along the way.
I hope you’ll join me.
When all is said and done, my friend, you are an integral part of the 35HOUSES project. Not only am I eternally grateful for your moral support, I am also relying on you to help fill in the gaps and keep me accountable. There is no way I can do this without you.
Los! Andiamo! Let’s gooooooooo!