A house, like a person, is held together by its belief in itself. As the gales rip through from the south, rolling over trees and uprooting sheep on its way to pound against my door, I can feel my house tremble. As the first shivers crawl along its spine, I begin to count the nails embedded shallowly in the timber. It would be so easy to prise each nail out, to yank first one way, then the next, and send the boards clattering into the stream. But the mysteries of building, the belief in ourselves, sends the ignorant wind bounding furiously away where it vents its anger on a hay-shed down the road, flinging the roof across the field like a crumpled lolly wrapper at a rugby game.
Building your own home is a scary business. Animal liberationists claim you’ll never eat meat again once you’ve visited an abattoir. Factory workers often claim you’ll never eat their factory’s products again once you’ve witnessed the manufacturing process. That’s why I never visit abattoirs or factories - I just don’t want to know what happens there. Ignorance may not be bliss, but at least it doesn’t put you off your dinner.
But my house was different. I had seen inside. I knew how few nails were holding it together. I’d seen the inherent weaknesses in the techniques. I’d experienced how easily timber splits and concrete cracks. Yet I was now expected to dwell inside the structure I’d constructed, this tentative tower of trembling timber.
It wasn’t that I was consciously expecting disaster, or that I had any reason to doubt my home’s capacity to withstand hurricanes and earthquakes. If anything, I should have been the most confident home-owner in Millers Flat, because I had exceeded the requirements - using extra nails, extra nail-plates, extra z-nails, extra bolts, extra everything - at every stage.
I had no problem living in other people’s houses, no matter how feeble they seemed in comparison to my sturdy castle. Marion’s bach wasn’t the world’s most solid house, with sunken piles, woodwormed weatherboards, a few rotting studs, and only rust keeping the iron roof attached, but the wind didn’t keep me awake at night with its boastful threats at her place.
But as soon as the towels began flapping on the clothesline on my verandah, my mind was tormented by visions resembling scenes from those cheap ’70’s disaster films. And that wasn’t opportunity knocking on my roof either.
For the first time in my life, I considered insurance. Until now, I had never had anything worth stealing, or anything which couldn’t be replaced for less than the cost of any insurance policy. All those exceptions, exemptions, excesses and smallprint always made me nervous.
What, after all, is an “Act of God”? If you believe in God, then He/She is everywhere - all-seeing and all-knowing - so everything is necessarily an Act of God, good and bad. Which, in theory, would mean we’d be insured against positive Acts of God as well, like winning the Lotto or having a meteor fall on our father’s girlfriend. But nobody wants to be insured against good events, and it’s hard to comprehend why God would want to rip the roof off anyone’s house. If anything, surely it should be called an “Act of Devil”? But aren’t such insurance escape clauses as “Act of God” discriminatory towards those of us who don’t believe in God? How can a non-entity wipe out your house? Do insurance companies also have an escape clause for Santa’s reindeer destroying my chimney, or the Tooth Fairy stealing more than teeth? Something called “Myth-adventure”? I’m not even going to mention “excesses” which seem to work on the winning principle that the more you need insurance, the less they’re willing to give you and the more it’s going to cost.
Although I weakened and considered insurance, I soon learnt that insurance wouldn’t consider me ... at least not until my house was wired and plumbed. (Which seems a rather odd condition to impose, considering most house damage is actually caused by either wiring or plumbing faults.) I suppose I didn’t have to tell the entire truth, after all, it was unlikely any assessor would trouble to come all the way to Millers Flat just to verify my claims.
But there’s something about insurance salespeople which makes me nervous. Maybe it’s because they always seem like professional cardsharps in the poker game of life.
You know they’re bluffing. Surely if Halley’s Comet does strike the Earth, it won’t necessarily hit my house.
You know the odds are on your side. If Halley’s Comet does strike the Earth, and it does hit my house, what are the chances of it happening in my lifetime ... and while I’m not on the toilet?
You also know you’re never going to win. After all, the policy stipulates quite clearly - under magnification - that any damage caused by a once-in-a-lifetime encounter with Halley’s Comet will be assessed at 1656 values, minus depreciation, of course.
But once you’re in the game, with the grim spectre of disaster leering over your shoulder, you can never fold, and you’ll stay until the end, signing those I.O.U.’s for the rest of your life.
Insurance salespeople also tend to make me feel insecure. Their job, after all, is putting values on people’s lives. Maybe I’m afraid they’ll tell me I’m not worth as much as I thought I was. Maybe they’ll laugh when I confess my materialistic impotence. Is that all your house is worth? Is that all you own? No car? No antiques? Nothing? What have you been doing with your life? Insecurity leads to exaggeration. And by the time I leave their office, I’ve usually got a tailor-made insurance policy ... one tailor-made for Howard Hughes!
So, feeling nervous and insecure, I couldn’t lie. And, unable to lie, I was rejected. Of course, if it hadn’t been so personal, or had simply been a matter of ‘accidentally’ filling out an empty box on a form wrongly, it would have been an entirely different matter. After all, I’ve blithely written ‘Lumberjack’ as my stated occupation in every census and immigration form I’ve filled out in the last ten years. But what would have been the point of lying anyway? Dishonesty would invalidate any policy. It’s no use claiming the thief also stole your door or the storm dissolved your windows when the assessor comes to call.
So no insurance security blanket for me. Not yet, anyway.
But I’d been infected. Suddenly, after an uninsured lifetime, I craved the comfort of a comprehensive policy. Even though I still didn’t own much of value. Even though Millers Flat is a relatively crime-free area. Even though my house had already withstood the worst the weather was likely to throw at it. Having a house somehow changed everything. There was too much time invested, too much money, too many tears for me to risk losing it in one single, unexpected, freak event. It wasn’t so much damage that I feared, as destruction. Total loss.
I’d seen a solid, sturdy relationship collapse without any warning, its foundations undermined by years of neglect and bland assumption. Although no insurance policy could have compensated for my loss, perhaps, if I’d broadened my investments, invested more of myself in strengthening other relationships, friendships outside of marriage, invested more in my life, perhaps I could have salvaged something, and perhaps I wouldn’t have been left emotionally bereft and spiritually impoverished.
I didn’t want the same to happen to my house. Not my house. Because if the truth was faced, I had, to my ignorant shame, committed more of myself to building my house than strengthening my marriage. Committed myself to actions rather than emotions, foolishly believing they spoke the same language. Now that I’d finally realised the value of what I had, of who I was, of what I’d lost, only now did I feel the need to insure against its loss.
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