People
are always asking me: Hey, Jon Spruce,
when you gonna settle down?
Yo,
baby, it’s not your fault. It’s not from
lack of trying.
But
I got to do it my way…settling down without settling at all.
To
be honest, I’m not even sure what settling
down even means.
I
guess I was absent the day they handed out the long list of society’s
benchmarks.
Does
it mean just coming home to a list of errands?
Does it mean spinning the chore wheel?
Does
it mean just staying at home and saving the money and saving the gas and fidgeting
with the thermostat while, out there beyond the front door, the snow is melting
or the acorns are falling or the rivers are rising or the magnolia is budding?
I
mean, you don’t want to give up a good parking spot, do you?
A
few weeks ago, I got a good taste of settling
down and I ended up stuck in a snuggie, addicted to bad TV, moss growing
under my rump, asleep at the wheel.
But
now I was on the outside, looking in. You
can’t say I didn’t try.
A
lot of times, I think settling down
means staying put. It means people can
make a good guess where you are, at any given moment, and usually be
right.
On
the grid. At the desk. On hold.
Inside.
It
means being home…which means choosing a house...buying roots, building equity and
nurturing moss.
Buying
a house? It can’t be as hard as I think
and it can’t be as monumental as they want me to believe.
I’m
smart. I can do things. I can make an appointment with some
paper-pushing banker. I can fill out the
forms, let some lending company go through my personal purchasing history, sign
on the dotted line and then spend the next thirty years paying for my own front
door.
That’s
a walk in the park.
It’s
knowing what I want, forevermore. It’s
settling. That’s the killer.
Why?
Because,
just like the trees, new ideas and new flowers blossom with every
season…there’s always new branching to be done…there’s always new fruit to
taste and there’s always old fruit dropping by the curbside…the colors are
always changing.
What
if…what if I buy that old ramshackle of a house? What then?
I move my stuff in. I change my
address. I fix her up. I learn about water heaters and garbage
disposals and septic tanks, if applicable.
I
lay me some roots.
I
hang up my hat.
But
what if…what if I change my mind? What
if my mood swings? What if my weather
changes?
It’s
bound to happen.
I
mean, you can always leave. You can
always give up the interior occupation, sell the house and then go back to the reckless,
heedless lifestyle of a tree-hunter.
But
not really.
You
can always come back…sure…but you can’t come back all the way.
Trust
me. I know me better than myself.
There
will come a night…an inevitable evening…when I am warm and settled in the
confines of my own house…gently drowsing to the rhythms of some old adventure
novel…and I will rise from my Lay-Z-Boy, startled by the sound of someone tapping,
of someone gently rapping, at my city door.
I
will swing the door open wide and there he’ll be…my old younger self…hat in
hand…asking if Jon Spruce can come out and play.
