It was inevitable that I would someday own a trailer.

I mean, how else could I both embrace and mock the stereotypes associated with the south and appalachia (my two major homes)?

Anyway, given my strong desire to own a home and my inability to do so because of my academic job situtation, I did the best I could. I bought a trailer at the beach I've been going to since my mother was pregnant with me, in the trailer park where my father and stepmother also have a place. I figure that no matter where I must go for a job as a professor, I will always return there for the summers. Also, it is a better investment than a mutual fund and a whole lot more fun. I would rather have real estate than stocks any day, a home rather than numbers in an account. Even a trailer on a leased lot is better than nothing.

And really, what does it MEAN to own a trailer?

It is a home that can move. Really move. I could tape shut all the drawers and cabinets, hire a flatbed truck, and take that sucker anywhere in the world without packing and unpacking. The whole home can fit in one lane (more or less) of I-95. So, the one home I now own is a turtle's shell, and could travel with me anywhere. It embodies the whole dilemna of our current mobility as a society: we all want homes, but, ironically, many of us need, want, or are forced to move to earn the money to get them. In principle, owning a trailer contributes to my feeling of being an academic nomad.

I have moved most years since I left graduate school. I have boxes that have outlived boyfriends, husbands, and jobs, their histories traceable through the varied markings that cover them. I have one box that carried different contents through 10 moves. Perhaps I should retire it, but I know I will need it again, and good boxes are hard to come by. This one is sturdy, has handles, and a firmly fitting lid. It sits in my attic, waiting for the next move.

The academy assumes the "serious" job candidate will move where the job is, regardless of personal attachments to location or family or friends. I have often gone where the job offers have taken me. I am an infinitely mobile expatriate, a sojourner in strange lands. Always temporary. Always uprootable.

But, really, I bought more then the moveable metal box; it is the location I wanted. The place itself. The island is so narrow where my trailer sits, I can see both the sound and the ocean from the catwalk that allows me to perch high in the air. I can hear the waves crash on the beach from my bedroom, and the music lulls me to sleep. I am steps away from my father's trailer, where he has a sound side lot, a dock, a boat, and views of the sun setting over the sound that make me cry. I am close to my stepmother who adores my daughter and whose desire to spend time with her frees me to write, to think, to walk on the beach alone. So why did I do it? Location, location, location.

Up until now, I would have said I am not a person unusually connected to place. I've moved a great deal without too much trauma. However, this little strip of land the sea has allowed to remain dry pulls on me like the tide, drawing me continually back. My family has owned houses all over the island, and we hold our family reunion "beach week" each summer on its shores. So each summer, I return in the great family migration, to the place where my mother dug a hole in the sand for her big, pregnant belly. Was it hearing and feeling the rythmn of the waves in the womb that imprinted on me this place? Am I, sea turtle returner, fated to come again and again to these waters? I guess so.

I had a chance to turn something awful and ugly into something beautiful and useful, to solidify the mystical hold this place has over me. The money I received for my divorce settlement could have sat in an account somewhere and given me the feeling of not being there, of nothingness. But in this way, I have taken part of something invisible and airless and turned it into something I can touch and feel, and have fostered connection and family and home. What better use of money is there?