Mobile home reminders

of the impermanence of life and silliness of status

I live in a senior citizen mobile home park. In a trailer. I am quick to qualify that my trailer is in a 5-Star (yes, they rate them) mobile home park in Southern California. Though it’s over 30-years old, it’s been redone inside with sheet-rock walls to cover the classic paneling and has a new sub-floor so the original plywood doesn’t rot through. I have a little yard and my home is pit-set, which means on one side I can walk out on ground level and instead of plastic skirting, my home has a concrete block foundation.

All the above characteristics are symbols of status in the subculture of mobile home dwellers.

Important terminology

The appropriate term for a dwelling such as mine is: mobile home, never trailer. If you want to upset someone who paid $300,000 up to several million (not our park, but some in S. California) for their mobile home, call it a trailer.You will be immediately corrected.

Perhaps that’s why I loved it when I found some bright, silver nail polish at Sephora’s in Santa Monica, CA called “Trailer Trash.” I wear it with pride.

I live in a trailer; it came here on wheels. Someday it will be hauled away on wheels and either demolished or hauled down to Mexico. I love that—the reality that my home isn’t permanent.

Trailers and the impermanence of life

When I was a little kid in Sunday School, they used to sing a song that included a line something like this, “this world is not my home, I’m just passing through.”

I think it’s hard for people to remember that when they’ve invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in a mini-mansion or even remodeled their kitchen or yard that’s in a neighborhood where the homes don’t move in and out on wheels. I also think that’s why some people I care for have gently expressed their sorrow that my husband and I don’t live in “a real house” and they wish they could help us purchase one.

But I’m quite happy where I am. More than happy actually, because the reality that I’m sitting in a room on piers that replaced wheels and the solid walls around me aren’t permanent is a reminder of reality. I believe in the truth of the Christian Bible that tells me that here on earth I’m a pilgrim. It’s a pilgrimage that matters in what I believe and do; how I act and love while I’m here, not what I live in. It isn’t permanent. It’s simply the first stop on an eternal journey.

NASA images and trailers

When I look at the astounding pictures from space, I imagine that someday, somehow I will live in that neighborhood. I know that in the status conscious world we live in, my home is pitied and mocked, though of course seldom to my face and only among friends who talk sadly of my loss of a “real house,” like aristocracy in the past pitied the poor relative who lost their inheritance.

I don’t mind. My trailer home reminds me to keep my eyes on the stars.