Sweating. Getting dirty. Burning things.
Rebuilding the house in DeMotte was the most fun I had had in the past few years.
That sentence landed in the middle of something much harder. My mom, Gisi, had died unexpectedly. Nothing was prepared. My brother and I went into the house and started dealing with what was there.
We removed more than sixty cubic yards of material. That is not a typo. The floors and ceilings had to come out. Once the clearing was done, we could begin restoring the place.
It was enormous, ugly work, and doing it with my little brother was the good part. We had spent the previous weeks dealing with sudden travel, arrangements, and all the logistics that appear when somebody dies. The house gave us something physical and obvious. Carry this out. Tear that down. Save what can be saved. Make the next room usable.
DeMotte was very country. The population was only a few thousand people. It was a different world from New York and from my days at Reonomy, where the work was APIs, product priorities, office moves, and releases that went out early.
In the house, progress had weight. A full container left the property. A bad floor disappeared. A room changed shape by the end of the day. I was exhausted, filthy, and happier doing that work than I expected.
My mind immediately started running ahead. More houses. More places to rebuild. Maybe Portland, Maine, which I loved. Maybe somewhere in the woods eventually. A cheaper and simpler life sounded extremely good from inside a torn-apart house in Indiana.
Amanda was doing well in her own career, and I was not leaving her behind. I loved my woman. Any different life would have to be one we chose together, not one I disappeared into alone.
Until then, I was still in New York, still swinging for the fences at work, and still trying to hustle and make some cash.
But now there was another thing in the plan: get back to DeMotte, work beside my brother, and keep rebuilding.