The house stands sturdy and straight. To us—my four children and me—it is a marvel, as surreal and unlikely as an ancient colossus. It is our home, in the truest sense. We built it. Every nail, every two-by-four, every three-inch slice of hardwood flooring has passed through our hands. Most pieces slid across our fingers multiple times as we moved material from one spot to another, installed it, ripped it out, and then tried again. Often the concrete and wood scraped flesh or hair, snagging physical evidence and vaulting it into the walls. Sometimes bits of wood or slivers of metal poked under our skin. I have shavings of house DNA permanently embedded inside my palm and dimpled forever in my left shin. The house wove us all together in this painful and intimate union, until we were a vital part of one another.
The idea of building our own home was not born out of boredom, but rose as the only possible way to rebuild my shattered family while we worked through the shock waves of domestic violence and mental illness. The dangers of our past were more difficult to leave behind than we ever imagined.
I groped for something that would weave us together with a sense of purpose, something large and profound. We needed a place to live, and one fall evening I imagined us working together, building our place, taking small pieces and fastening them together until they had grown into something much bigger than ourselves. The next day I discussed the idea with my three older children, and by that afternoon we had decided to do it.
I didn’t know yet how to frame a window or a door, how to snake pipes and wires through a wall, or how to draw up blueprints and obtain permits. But I knew my kids, and I knew we needed this.
We thought the beautiful metaphor of rebuilding our family while we were building a house would make both tasks easier. We believed we were starting at the bottom and could only rise up from that humble spot. We imagined we’d feel powerful and big because we were doing something profound.
We were wrong on all accounts.
Nothing makes a person feel smaller, weaker, or more insubstantial than taking on one thousand times more than you can handle. Building a house was the most difficult challenge we’d ever face, and so was rebuilding our family amid the trauma of abuse. We were nowhere near the bottom, but we would find it before we found the top.
One board at a time, we built a house.
And in the end, we discovered a home.