MARKING TERRITORY

One year ago today. In maybe two hours from now. It began to rain and the wind picked up and as it whipped about the house it snuggled under a corner of the blue tarp on the roof, where the shingles had been removed down to the wood, and it played with the tarp, just for a moment, for it was a strong wind, and then it ripped it loose.

And inside the house, this house, the rain began to pour in. First I heard one drip in my room and as I went to inspect I found water rushing down the walls, rain pouring into the dog crates where the dogs huddled. I yanked the crates out of the rain and screamed for John and together we began throwing blankets, towels, sheets, anything we could find: buckets, bowls, tupperware, pitchers-- under the streams of rain but the harder we tried the worse it became and I picked up the phone and called the roofer --- because that is why the shingles were off-- and said, in a sentence made up completely, I believe, of four-letter words, please do come over and help us, we seem to be in a spot of difficulty....

THE BEGINNING

THE ATTIC STORAGE

THE CEILING

And like that. In less than twenty minutes, the house was ruined. Walls soaked, ceilings hanging by a thread, water 2" deep on the floor in every room but 3. Upstairs and down, uninhabitable. Boom. Like that everything in our lives was different and would never be the same again.

When we moved back in in September, as we unpacked, John took the tags the movers had placed on things; the tags  that read SZATON or sometimes SZOTAN , or SZATAN, and began putting them on other things in the house. On drawer handles and windows and the stove door, the fridge door.

It was a way of marking the house without pee. Marking his territory.

This is mine and this is mine and this is mine and I am not renting it I own it. I paid for it and I cared for it and it is MINE.

This morning I went for a bike ride before John was up. When I came home I could hear him moving around the kitchen and I knew what he was doing. One year ago today we were forced out of our home.
Today, he took the tags off.
We are home. The house is marked.