Moving Magic - Following the Breadcrumbs

A Memory to Fuel This Moment

We’d outgrown the 450 square-foot Bucktown apartment and music studio 20 minutes away from it in Chinatown. Our auras were bursting out of the spaces. I’d been in the apartment for six years, Jon had joined me there a couple of years after I moved in, and he had been in his studio for over ten years. I was paying $525 at the time and he $275, and well, the low rents definitely kept us in place even as the neighborhood around us was gentrifying at a rapid pace.

We started to feel the “It’s time to move” nudge which got louder and louder for about a year. Friends would just tell me this out of the blue. I heard it from my support staff in my head. We had a gas leak in the apartment that displaced us for a couple of nights. The rats that camped out in the alley behind us due to it backing up to a restaurant were getting more intrusive (we’d have to forgo picking up our pizzas at the kitchen door as the owner of the restaurant invited us to do.)

It was time to move. It was also the place I had lived at the longest since moving out of my childhood home seventeen years earlier. Typically throughout college and then afterward I’d move every two or three years as the neighborhood I had been living in became too pricey and I’d have to find another further south and west in the city of Chicago.

My move to Bucktown in the early fall of 1996 was an outlier. I moved north this time, back to the neighborhood where I had shared an apartment with my sister from 1990-1993. I loved that little garden apartment, finding it was a piece of magic in itself. Abruptly I needed a new place to live as the relationship I had been in for a few years ended. We were living together at the time and it was her apartment, so I was the one who had to go. I had just a few days to find something and the heartbreak I was experiencing at the loss of my relationship did not make the hunt easy nor did my limited resources, a theme.

I saw the ad for the little space in Bucktown and made an appointment to see it. The apartment was shown to me by Lottie, a middle-aged woman who lived on the second floor of the four flat with her mother, Tillie, who owned the building.

”Too small,” I thought to myself as she showed me around.

“Why don’t you think about it?” she said. “I had someone else lined up and that person fell through just yesterday. The woman who used to live here just finished medical school, and she left to be a doctor on a Native American Reservation. The rent is month to month, and if you stay, I won’t raise your rent for five years.”

None of that registered through the fog of my depression.

I went back “home” and called my friend Amy. I told her about the space and that it was the best of all of the crappy apartments that I had seen, and she said, “What are you crazy? Call her back and take it. It’s exactly what you wanted to pay and it’s month to month. If you don’t like it, you can leave any time you want.” Sometimes I need someone else’s voice to spell things out clearly to me.

I hung up the phone, now in a panic that I had waited too long, and called Lottie back.

“If it’s still available I’ll take it!” please, please, please baby Jesus and all of the saints and angels (weird Catholic programming from childhood was sometimes still asserting itself into my consciousness at the time).

“Great!” she said. It turns out that she was a hardcore Catholic herself which may also have been why I used that particular spell.

Phew!

Four days later I was moved in, depressed and broken-hearted and lonelier than I had been in a long time since my childhood days of being left at home while my family would go out and do fun things, but in a home at least.

Our current home in Ojai is a month-to-month rental. We took it with the same understanding that month-to-month would be best in case we did not like it. Apparently, month-to-month rentals are the ones that hold onto me/us for the longest.

Soon after, the magic of that move began to unfold. The space accommodated me and my needs, seeming to physically shift when I needed it to. Our home in Ojai has done the same. Both are physically too small and yet both were/are somehow just the right size in the moment for what we need.

I started channeling in that little garden apartment. Amy, Wendy, and I would spend many nights going long into the early morning hours channeling for ourselves and then others. We’d cram as many beings, human and otherwise, as we could in my small living room.

I began exploring magic and spells and crystals and astrology and healing and continued to expand my metaphysical and mystical toolbox beyond the tarot which had been my only tool for a decade.

I launched my career as a psychic and channel, putting myself out there in ways that scared me and doing it anyway, fueled by love and magic and my desire to be of service.

I started cooking in that apartment, teaching myself finally how to make food other than simple things like popcorn and eggs and brownies from a box. Working in a restaurant for a decade meant I almost always got fed.

And two and a half years after moving into it I met Jon.

So here we were, in 2003, bursting out of the seems of that abode, knowing that if we stayed there, we would stunt ourselves and what was possible for us. We were scared to leave because leaving would mean paying more, yet we knew it was right, so we did it anyway. We began our search for a new home in the city.

The first thing we did was create a list of how it was we wanted to feel on a regular basis in our new home. If the feelings were satisfied then the practical pieces would be as well. (Mental note: Do this now, Nora! What are you waiting for?)

Then I hit The Reader. Back then it was the standard in finding pretty much anything and everything in Chicago, especially when it came to apartment/home hunting. As I looked I was unsurprised that we’d once again been gentrified out of Bucktown. There were maybe two places we looked at in that neighborhood, but neither was quite right, and we’d have to pay more than the $1000/month maximum we had set for ourselves.

We expanded our search as we began to clear out and pack, we’d given notice both at the apartment and the music studio. We’d swing between excitement and anxiety, despair and certainty as one after another, it just was not happening either due to the space not being right or the landlord thinking we were weird.

“You’re what? A channel? You’re not going to have strange people coming here are you?”

“Uh, no, no we won’t because we won’t be living here.”

There was one we really liked and we liked the landlord as well. The space could work we tried to convince ourselves as we toured it (it really could not have, we needed one bedroom and two offices). We let the owner know that we’d let him know.

When we got outside Jon pulled his bloody hand out of his pocket. Somehow an old razor blade he had forgotten about worked its way into his hand and cut him. We took that as a sign that this was not the one for us.

Ugh! We were getting exhausted!

The next day I stumbled upon an ad for one I had not seen before and thought, “What the hell. I might as well look at it”. The price was right but it only had two bedrooms and was in a neighborhood we were not considering. I made an appointment with the owner, Matt because my tarot cards told me to.

I went by myself the next day as Jon was busy taking his mother grocery shopping. I had three apartments to look at. Matt’s was the last on the list. The first two were definite “no’s” as in “No way in hell!”

I got to the address, knocked on the door, and there was no answer. Hmmmmm. He lived there with his wife and child on the first floor and the apartment was on the second. I paced around a bit, craving a cigarette for a moment. I had only quit the year before. He pulled up and parked, apologizing profusely. He had just come from a memorial service for the mother of a friend and he was surprised at the emotional toll it had taken.

We stood in front of his two flat and talked for a bit. I spontaneously passed along a message from his friend’s mom and he was there for it. I could feel the magic in the moment. This was going to be it!!!!!!

He showed me around the most beautiful and warm-feeling space we had seen, but it was too small. I experienced real regret as I loved both the space and him immediately and was a bit confused that my tarot cards seemed to have led me astray (I mean, it happens. Nothing is perfect, but I had gotten a very strong read on going to see his space, as in, “Do it!!!! 100% yes to checking it out!”).

I stayed there longer than I needed to after expressing how sad I was that it was not a fit for us. He felt the same. I just liked him as a person and we continued to talk a bit.

“I need to get going,” I finally said. We hugged each other and I crossed the street to my car.

I grabbed the door handle as I heard him from behind me suddenly say, “You know, my sister has this huge three-bedroom apartment in the building she and her husband own in West Rogers Park just sitting there empty. Let me give her a call and see if she’s ready to rent it.”

He got Theresa’s voicemail and left her a message.

I left feeling like this had to be it, but it was still in the ethers. I tried not to get my hopes up and instead just continued to focus on what we wanted while trying not to panic. It was getting down to the wire.

Theresa called me a few hours later after Jon had come home and I picked a fight with him because he’d gone out to eat with his mom while I was driving all over the city looking for a place to live. I wasn’t really mad at him, I was just anxious and hangry.

She let us know we could swing by the next day to have a look at her three-bedroom/two-bathroom two thousand square foot apartment for $1100 including heat (this is a big deal in Chicago, heat included). It was $100 more than we wanted to pay, and yet, it seemed this was meant to be. They had a bad experience with a previous tenant and the apartment had been empty for months. They were not actively looking for someone just waiting for the right someone.

We got there about fifteen minutes early that next day and decided to ring the bell anyway instead of sitting in our car. We’d parked right in front and noticed the abundance of parking on the block as the building was across the street from a field. Easy parking on a city street is a premium feature of any housing situation and Jon and I were thrilled to find this out.

Theresa answered the bell, she looked to be around my age, “I am sorry we’re early,” I started.

”That’s okay, let’s head up,” she said smiling. Then she stopped, “You know what, I promised my son and nephew I would make them milkshakes and I need to do that first.”

I loved her immediately, her unwillingness to go back on her promise to her son to accommodate the people who had shown up at her house early, was just the entry point to us discovering her generosity and kindness.

“That’s fine,” we both said.

“Wait, would you two like milkshakes?” she laughed

“YES!”

“Our apartment is exactly like the one upstairs just messier,” she said as she walked us back to their kitchen. Jon and I marveled at the size of it. We met her seven-year-old son Paul and his cousin.

“They are playing some game where they keep scaring each other,” she said. “I’m not sure this is going to help Paul sleep tonight.”

The boys were running around as she threw ice cream and milk and chocolate sauce in the blender for us all. We enjoyed our shakes with her in the delightful built-in breakfast nook. “Yours has one too,” she said. Then she caught herself, “I mean if you end up wanting it and it all works out.”

She was a teacher in the Chicago public school system and her husband, Vasken, owned an auto body repair shop with his brother. Vasken was Armenian and had emigrated from Lebanon during the civil war when he was a teenager, leaving his country in the dead of night in a small boat with his family while bullets whizzed over their heads.

He had come home at some point during the forty-five minutes we sat at their table sharing milkshakes and getting to know one another. He was like Theresa, kind and generous and available, both heart-centered and committed to each other, their children, and their families.

“What do you do for work?” one of them asked.

This was usually where the door slammed shut. Psychic, channel, healer, reiki, musician, working for ourselves, these things are not uncommon here in Ojai, CA in the year 2023, but twenty years ago in Chicago, we were different as times were different.

“Wait, what?” Theresa said. “That’s so cool,” as Vasken nodded along in agreement. She, an Irish Catholic like me, had already started to go outside of that box herself and we did not have to explain to her at all what any of it was.

“I guess we should take you upstairs and show you the apartment,” Theresa finally said.

It was magnificent and exceeded our expectations. The previous tenant had painted a beautiful tree that covered the wall of the entry way winding its way down to the hardwood floors. The space was enormous, almost quadruple the size of Lottie’s apartment, and our voices echoed off of the walls. The kitchen was still being finished. “Vasken will put in new cabinets and a dishwasher.”

“A dishwasher??” I exclaimed

“Well, yeah, you’re going to want a dishwasher, right?” I silently nodded.

Two of the bedrooms were huge and the smaller one which was off of the kitchen had the second bathroom attached to it. “In the old days, this was the maid’s room,” Theresa explained. The building had been constructed in the 1920s.

We could see ourselves there, our lives and work easily contained in the rooms including the giant living room which we could use for classes.

“Why don’t you go home and think about it,” Theresa and Vasken both said. “We have no one else we are even showing it to and you don’t need to make a decision right now.” I gave her Lottie’s number as a reference and we left.

Jon and I felt sort of stunned. It fulfilled the list we had created and more, but we were worried about money, as it was $100 more a month than what we were planning which was already going to be increasing our housing costs. We were also worried about the credit check they mentioned wanting to do as we were leaving. We had some credit card debt at the time and not great credit scores. Throughout my twenties, I had run up debt to subsidize a life I could not afford and rarely paid my bills on time.

When I hit 33, I started paying the bills the day they arrived as opposed to waiting until I felt that familiar burn of anxiety and worthlessness, and this began a change in our financial well-being. But there was still the debt. We were worried they’d look at our credit reports and reject us.

I called Theresa later the next day to tell her we were very strongly leaning towards taking the apartment if they would have us, or maybe she called me to check-in. Whichever it was, the real reason for the call was that her daughter Helena, who was nine years old at the time and not at home when we’d come by, got on the phone with me and said, “You have to move in here! My favorite movie is Beethoven Lives Upstairs! You have to move in! Please, please, please, please come rent our apartment! You are the perfect people. Please, please, please, please.”

Theresa got back on laughing, “I’m sorry, I claim no responsibility for that. She just watched Beethoven Lives Upstairs which is about a child who befriends the musician who lives in the apartment above them, and when she found out that Jon was a musician, well, that happened.”

We made a plan to go back later that week and fill out the application and/or sign the lease. When a nine-year-old gives clear instructions, I am not one to dismiss them.

When we arrived there was a huge banner over the front door welcoming us home. Jon and I were still worried about the credit check, which they were firm on doing. We came in and Helena was so excited to meet us in person, bouncing all over the place, her beautiful, sweet self exclaiming her delight.

“We made you a treasure hunt,” said Paul, his sweetness and sensitivity on display as well. He handed us a post-it note with a clue. We followed the clue to another post-it note with another clue and then another and another until we got to the treasure which was pie! PIE! Milkshakes and pie and love, so much love. My reading on going to see Matt’s apartment had been accurate after all, the energy of it. It was the details I had misinterpreted, which can be common when using divination tools.

We sat at their dining room table filling out the lease agreement and eating pie. Theresa was using a lease that a colleague had recommended and it was long and detailed and she kept saying, “Uh, yeah, forget about this…….and this does not apply……or this……………..”. Then we got to the broiler pan piece. It went something like this, “Under penalty of severe fines you may under no condition take the broiler pan with you when you leave!”

Jon then did a 30-minute bit on stealing broiler pans which had Theresa laughing so hard she was crying and could not catch her breath. Jon has definitely been a comedian in other lives and if things had gone differently for him in this one, it easily could have been a path for him.

”Okay, what about the credit check?” I asked as we had completed the lease agreement.

“Ummm, we don’t need to do it. Forget about it,” Vasken said as he waved his hand and looked at Theresa.

“Are you sure?” asked Theresa. They had been burned pretty badly by their previous tenant and had another problem tenant on site we would come to discover. This has also been a repeating theme for us since, moving onto a property where there had been problems between the tenants and landlords before our arrival.

“It’s fine,” Vasken said.

“Okay then,” she nodded, and with that went all of our fears, well most of our fears. It was still a big move, but we were all in.

We were home, and more than that, we had found family.

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