The only thing I knew at the start of my capstone project was that I wanted to focus on my Shoebox––the home that I have made for myself in my Ann Arbor studio.

So, I began exploring conversations with the people of my life that were familiar with the Shoebox. By familiar I mean that these people understood, even in a vague sense, that I have a distinct relationship with my space here. 

 

I am indebted to these people and these conversations for their influence on the formation of my project, but more importantly for their role in my journey to find home. Below I reflect on notable moments throughout this experience. 

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A poet named Joan led me to the question at the heart of my project: what does home mean to me? Through a process of remembering the homes that have shaped me––that is, the people, places, and objects of our pasts, I have thought deeply about the home that I have made here. I carried home with me when I arrived in Ann Arbor two years ago, and as I prepare to leave this place, I’m wondering how I will carry the Shoebox with me when I go.

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“We just always had it,” my mother tells me, when I ask about the stool serving as my nightstand. “I know it was one of her finds.” I think we both smile, phones pressed between our ears and shoulders, at the mention of my grandmother. Moving to touch the wood seat, I sit on the floor and scooch my body close enough to feel the metal legs on my legs. Eyes level with the thick wood top that held my bottom at the head of the Sunday dinner table for so many years. Next to Dooie, next to Grams, next to Gramps, Brother, and Momma. And by Monday morning, the stool and my grandmother would be ready to hold me again. 

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Tape didn’t stick to the wood panels, so he hung the clipping with this staple gun, just as a child plasters pictures of their dreams to the walls of their bedroom. The image of a house took up most of the page and the title read, “Tiny Living.” Tiny houses were trending and the seasoned carpenter was an expert––his whole life packed in the pockets of his blue jeans and between four basement walls. 

 

In a studio apartment, the typical boundaries between spaces don’t exist, and there’s a certain comfort and claustrophobia that comes with this. Yet, it reminds me of my childhood home: small, well-loved, and lived in.  

 

“I want to know what role this obit has played in your healing…how it’s become part of the furniture of your everyday life.” (Jamie Monville) 

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My eyes move from the fridge, to the desk, to the photograph next to my bed––I close them and try to find him in my home before this one. Before his death. I used to wonder why we weren’t meant to live in the same tiny spaces. But how could it have been so if my father, too, was always looking for home? 

 

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“I love coming to her apartment and recognizing her in her things, I love hearing that she recognizes her grandmother in these things.” (Caroline Knight) 

 

1409 is living in me here. Davey is living in me here. Grams is living in me here. 

 

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The only thing I knew at the start of my capstone project was that I wanted to focus on my Shoebox––the home that I have made for myself in my Ann Arbor studio. Through conversation in and about this place, I have invited people into my home in an effort to welcome them inside of my heart––to let others know me by knowing the people, places, and objects that have shaped the home and self that I have created in the Shoebox.

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