Stories about Stuff: The Mug
Cooper River Farms is a newish apartment complex just off 526 on Clements Ferry Road. Touted as “luxury” apartments, complete with a modernized farmhouse-style office and amenities facility, we were awarded a gift bag upon execution of the lease. The branded boat tote contained two of these mugs, an alligator-shaped keychain/bottle opener that secured our pool fobs, utilities information and a Domino’s pizza coupon.
The “we” of this move included my two childen as well as my partner and his son. Five months prior, I’d opened a yoga studio in a very new and much anticipated development in the Neck of the Charleston Peninsula. The months and years leading up to that moment can be summarized as “not easy”, and included a divorce, financial challenges, years of seven-day work weeks navigating an industry that left me jaded and barely able to pay rent each month. I lost my first investor for the new space due to an unexpected emergency and scraped together start-up capital as best I could with zero assets.
On the upside, in the midst of it all I met a man who was endlessly encouraging, at times embarrassingly (in my mind) unabashed in his private and public cheering and praise. He was much younger (almost exactly 11.5 years) and had a son for whom he bore most of the parental responsibility. I went through his difficulties at his side during those years as well. While our children got along for the most part, our households, parenting styles, and approaches to just about everything were very different.
These differences created a strong sense of attraction, as they usually do, but at times, significant challenges. He shared business ideas, I provided parenting guidance, and we muddled through.
When the studio finally opened, I was spent. The delays in construction had eaten away at my start-up funding, the (generous and well-intentioned) press leading up to the opening had crushed my spirit and made me question my path, and this beautiful building was a shit space. It looked amazing and functioned poorly. I was overwhelmed juggling the challenges of the space and the business, worried about being absent to my own children, and constantly felt that I didn’t have enough left for Pat and his son, who needed a lot.
About a month in, we went our separate ways. Sort of. I was prepared to be relieved of the energetic and emotional burden, but I was gutted. I had craved space and time to myself - I’ve always needed a certain amount of solitude to recalibrate. I had no problem being alone, but I missed him. And I knew he missed me.
We went several weeks without speaking or seeing one another. Eventually he reached out and suggested we go to a Friday night baseball game, and by Sunday morning we were pouring over real estate listings. We were committing, with all of the associated challenges, to move forward together.
The next few months were a blur, but in short, my landlord let me out of my long term lease a month early, allowing me to save that cash and move into Pat’s house in West Ashley while it went on the market. It sold blissfully quickly. So quickly, in fact, that the new construction we had chosen wouldn’t be ready in time. We scrambled to find a three-month rental with three bedrooms and room for my daughter’s pet rats.
Enter Cooper River Farms and their nautically-themed welcome gift. We used the mugs regularly, heating tea or pouring coffee next to the cooktop that triggered the smoke alarm as soon as the skillet contents began to sizzle, every single time. We drank from them after waking up to the sound of revelry, followed by the Star Spangled Banner, blasting through the thin ceilings from the apartment above, where the residents were in the National Guard.
As Patrick struggled with the confines of an apartment after seven years of big grassy yards and a garage to tinker in, I tried to make sense of the newness. My old apartment - smaller by a bedroom and a bathroom and many square feet, had not a luxury item in sight by Cooper River Farms standards. It was built in the 50s and never remodeled, dingy and crumbling. But it was warm and familiar and quiet. This new life moved at a different pace, felt slightly unpredictable and a lot louder.
Sound was a challenge at the new studio too, where general chatter and the sliding of metal chairs on the pavers from the patio below during peak hours became trapped in the luminescent glass box and were enhanced as they reverberated - trains rambling by and weekend crowds could register over 90 decibels.
Laying in bed at night in that alien apartment, I had to come to terms with the fact that a business plan and passion project I’d poured everything into was not going to succeed in the location I’d waited two years for. What had been built specifically for my use was not usable, l had no interest in trying to pick up the pieces and lock in the cash to make a move. On the Christmas morning we spent at Cooper River Farms, largely empty but for moving boxes and a naked tree with a star on top, I received a call from one of my most dedicated students. I broke the news, broke down, and made peace with the messiness of change.
During that same period, on the front end of our four-month stay, Pat mourned the sale of the first house he’d ever owned. His childhood had involved a lot of moving and disappointment, so that house had been a big step toward a stronger sense of security. It closed as a hurricane approached, as we simultaneously tossed furniture into the living room and shifted suitcases to the trunk of the truck for a quick evacuation to North Carolina. The tumult of it all rattled hard, the shockwaves continued to make even the most mundane moments more tender and fragile through that time of extended and suspended transition.
Both the apartment and the studio were short-lived, but both taught me a lot about the natural cycles of coming and going as well as the ways in which these cycles overlap with others, endlessly and infinitely. I began to understand that despite my tendency to isolate when hurt or struggling, that it’s worth letting others share in your sorrow, your failures, your sense of uncertainty. I’d always tried to, felt compelled to, run and hide when things were messy or hard. I’ve wanted to control other people’s view of my shit and protect myself from theirs. That’s still my default.
Ultimately the hurt is easier to manage and the victories more sweet in the company of chosen family. The vulnerability terrifies me even still, sneaking in and holding me back from behind, so familiar that I don’t even feel it until the resistance is painful. I still don’t even recognize it at times, because those engrained emotional patterns are easily mistaken for structures of support - essential to survival. But those walls I built and strive to break down have never been home despite their occasional offering of false security. Home is when my people are - where I can be naked and raw and real and exposed as the human that I am, cheered on loudly and proudly for doing the best I can.