Free The Big Tiny: A Built-It-Myself Memoir by Dee Williams

nurses stop scribbling “congestive heart failure” in my medical chart, and I wanted to quit imagining that I was dying a little bit every day. I wanted to stop looking at everything so intensely—studying my housemates, the neighbors, my friends, the clouds, the way the sun warms me like it’s filling in the cavities between each and every one of my 4 trillion living cells. I wanted to stop looking at everything and thinking how perfect it is, and how much I was going to miss it, and then feeling so sad because I didn’t want to miss anything.
    As I sat there in the waiting room, waiting for the next round of diagnoses, the idea of building a tiny house seemed to make all the sense in the world. Somehow, it would shrink my life intoa manageable mouthful and connect me to the trouble-free kid who raced around her backyard catching fireflies at night.
    And building would be fantastic—a monumental project that would absorb every brain cell, and every ounce of focus and ability, and then maybe I’d stop staring at the sun like the most stunning act of God ever imagined. It would put all my home repair and remodeling skills to the test, and I’d have a chance to build something perfect; something warm and kind, and made out of materials that didn’t make me feel like I was lying to myself every time I claimed to be an environmentalist. I could build a little house like Tiny House Man, and if it made sense, I might even be able to move into it and let go of my big house—a move that would entail letting go of the perfect backyard, the beautiful gardens, and the accommodating floor plan, along with the mortgage, the utility bills, and the hours spent laboring to keep things from falling under the weight of time and the elements. Maybe I could walk away from all that. Maybe.
    Deciding that I needed to take some kind of action, I tore the article out of the magazine and smuggled it out under my shirt like porn. When I got home, I stuck the picture on the refrigerator, and for the next week, every time I caught a glimpse of the pointy little roof, I’d get happy-melty feelings.
    I convinced myself that I needed to find Tiny House Man. It was a completely logical course of action, like tracking down Jonas Salk for more information about his polio vaccine, orfinding the manufacturers of a particular product to see if there were any small pieces that presented a choking hazard. I needed to know the details, and a week after staring at the Tiny House Man and his perfect creation a thousand different times, studying the magazine photo in the same way a jewel thief would ogle the Queen’s crown, I decided to call directory assistance in Iowa City—that’s where the article placed Jay Shafer, The Tiny House Man.
    My hands started sweating as I stood in my kitchen, then paced from the oven to the kitchen sink, holding the phone, and then dialed the operator in Iowa City and asked for Jay Shafer. A moment later, she offered me his phone number. Just like that, I had the winning lottery ticket. I simultaneously wanted to barf and scream. I grabbed RooDee and went for a walk, talking to myself along the way: “Hello, Jay Shafer, this is Dee Williams and I wanted to . . . I was hoping that . . . I like your house and . . . your house is really cool and . . . I want to . . .
hope
to . . . build one too.” So it went for a half an hour, then an hour as I worked my way through the neighborhood, up and down the same street over and over, trying to find the right way to ask Jay for help. I stood in my kitchen like I did when I was stealing myself for an inspection, tucking my hair behind my ears and standing up straight, chest out . . . like a lion tamer ready to invite his opponent out of its cage. “Hello, Jay,” I boomed in a false bravado, “How you doing today?”
    In the long run, five minutes after I hung up the phone, Icouldn’t remember what we had said, or how the conversation had played out. I had