Sausage biscuits with jelly, sticks and mortgage insurance

I haven’t eaten a sausage biscuit with jelly since high school. The last time I ate one of those was more than 10 years ago. 

I bought some frozen biscuits and some vegan sausage on one of my first grocery runs at our new house. We bought a house in September 2020--something I thought I would never do, especially in the year 2020. 

As I researched all the things I needed to know before buying a house, I found all these gushy videos and blogs about how it felt to own a home for the first time. I found the “new house” content a little silly. 

Given my general cynicism about most things: the government, the healthcare system, the gaping holes and lack of a social safety net in our society, I thought buying a house would feel like nothing. The only thing I expected to feel was dread over paying the bank mortgage insurance and interest. 

What I experienced was something totally different. Feelings that made tears well up in my eyes. 

Back to this early weekend in our new  home: Sausage and biscuits sounded like a delicious breakfast on a chilly October morning.

I never thought a jelly and vegan sausage biscuit would bring me to tears, but it did. That first bite launched me straight into the Baptist church gymnasium where I had eaten dozens of jelly biscuits on cold Saturday mornings. 

My dad was the director of the Upward basketball program at my church. Almost all of our winter Saturdays were spent at the church ensuring the daily games ran smoothly. 

Those Upward days weren’t exactly easy for me. I was around 10-12ish years old. (An often awkward age for girls). One year I did Upward cheerleading, feeling so uncomfortable about how I looked in the cheerleading uniform. The next year, I played basketball. 

That year I played basketball was confusing. I was so confused about my body and about my role as a female person in the world. I was the only girl on my team. 

This was when I really started wearing baggy clothes and trying to hide the fact that I was, indeed, a female human. Around this time, my body was changing quickly, and I felt so uncomfortable in my own skin.

I wanted to hide my quickly changing body and I prayed every day no one would notice me or comment on how I was changing and maturing. 

Who knew it was jelly vegan sausage biscuit that would catapult me into my 12-year-old body and begin to really understand what that pain was. I still don’t understand it fully, but something about that jelly sausage biscuit tore open a sore spot I’d long tried to forget. 

Puberty was difficult. I knew from an early age that being beautiful meant being valued, but it also meant being judged. A beautiful woman could make a man stumble, you see. 

So when I started gaining weight in all the right places, I panicked. I didn’t want to be beautiful or desirable. I just wanted to be. I didn’t want the pressure to please a man’s eyes or any other part of him, for that matter. And I especially didn’t want anyone to see or desire my body, because having a desirable body meant having a body that makes men stumble. 

So I hid. For a long time. 

When I finally stopped hiding my body, my boyfriend told me that the boys at my youth group were addicted to porn because of the way I dressed. 

Back into hiding. Back into that same angst about my existence as a female human being in a world run by men. 

That year, I ate a lot of jelly sausage biscuits in the concession stand. Grape jelly, to be exact. 

I would go get my jelly sausage biscuit and go upstairs in the church gym and hide. I would hide, run the music for the basketball game intermissions and eat. I wore these loose khaki pants in attempt to hide my legs. The legs people said were attractive. I didn’t want to be attractive. I wanted to be invisible. 

Fourteen years later, that first bite into that jelly sausage biscuit standing in my kitchen, in my house, with my husband (heck, I have a husband!) sent a direct message to 12-year-old me: “Hey look! We have achieved something! We are self-sufficient and happy! We will not hate ourselves forever! We will learn how to manage these feelings, I promise.” 

So, I stood in my kitchen, crying as I drank coffee and ate my biscuit, much to Ty’s confusion. 

Another moment happened the next weekend, when we were gathering sticks for the first fire in our fire pit. 

My parents had a fire pit, and we spent many weekend nights around the firepit either making s’mores or just enjoying the evening. 

I’d gathered a lot of sticks growing up. 

The first stick-gathering moment I remember is helping my dad pick up sticks out of the yard on Saturday morning so he could mow the grass. My parents have lots of trees in their yard, and the summer storms would often knock those sticks into the grass, littering the yard with wooden lawn mower landmines. 

And, being a kid, I got the privilege of picking up the sticks and throwing them into the ditch behind the house. Once the firepit became a thing, the sticks went to the fire pit. 

Fast forward 15 years, and I’m yet again picking up sticks in the yard. 

But it’s my yard.

The sticks came from my trees. 

That grow on my property.

The firepit is behind my house. 

Tears. 

I didn’t expect to feel this sort of pride in being a homeowner. Buying a house has not been a top priority for us. I didn’t think I would buy a house until I was in my 30s. I truly didn’t believe I would be able to afford to before 30. 

But, we were incredibly blessed in 2020. Despite my husband losing his job and some other hardships, we’ve been extremely lucky. We’ve come out on top. So lucky that it feels weird to talk about right now. 

So many people are grieving loved ones, lost businesses, lost incomes, lost jobs, lost homes even. 

I did something 18-year-old me never imagined she would do during the least likely year I would have expected it. Maybe that’s why I’m emotional. Maybe if this happened in any other year, say 2019, it wouldn’t have felt like this. 

2020 taught me a lot about privilege. I have way more privilege than I’m even aware of at this moment. I have a job in my chosen field. I have no student loan debt. I have a loving, safe relationship. I have a comfortable, spacious home. I have a full pantry and full refrigerator. I have family who care about me. 

I have a lot. A whole lot. And I’m overwhelmed with gratitude. 

It’s easy for me to get distracted by the little things, and then make them big things. For example, I don’t have a dishwasher. I wish I had one. I grumble every time I wash the dishes. 

I also often grumble about awkward interactions. I take one awkward moment during an interview and use that one moment to judge my worth as a journalist. One stupid argument with Ty and I feel like I’m absolutely terrible spouse. 

Isn’t that a silly thing to do? 

One thing that isn’t silly is gratitude. 

My thoughts on those cheesy first-time homebuyer blogs have changed. (Here I am writing one). 

Who knows what those people had overcome to be able to buy a home. Buying a home is a privilege--one our bank system has systematically withheld from certain types of people. It’s a shame. 

I refuse to turn my nose up at anyone’s new house post or new baby post or “we’ve been dating for a month and are SO HAPPY” post ever again. 

It’s best to just be happy for people. To just celebrate their joy. Maybe if we celebrated ourselves and the successes of people in our community more often, we’d be less cynical.