Living Where Love Grows: Molly’s Years at Angel House

Molly Tarantino first joined L’Arche Chicago in 2016 as a summer intern at Angel House. She loved it so much, she never really left! Over the years, Molly has been a live-in assistant and now serves as the House Coordinator. Read on as Molly shares her favorite memories, what she’s learned, and why Angel House still feels like home.

When I first saw the front of Angel House, I was stunned. I knew roughly how many people were supposed to be living there, and I couldn’t imagine how we all would fit. (Angel House is a classic Chicago-style home, which means it is deceptively long. If you’ve never been, you’re officially invited to dinner so you can see what I mean.) It was the summer of 2016 when I arrived at Angel House as an intern, and I was full of nerves and excitement. The moment I passed over the threshold, complete strangers became my roommates. Shortly after, they became friends. The angels of Angel House taught me how to live in a city and how to cook, and shared their passions for gardening and drawing mandalas and working on puzzles late into the night. They gave me hugs on hard days and just because, showed me how to put the “clean” sign over the dishwasher handle so that dirty dishes wouldn’t end up among the washed ones by mistake, held my hand during evening prayer, pranked me by slipping ice cubes down my back, and handed me cups of coffee on groggy mornings. 

After one month in community I saw the rest of my life as an entirely different kind of thing.

I finished my internship with L’Arche, finished college, and came back to Angel House as quickly as I could. The day I moved back a little more permanently, I was so excited to see Christianne I was fit to burst. She walked into the kitchen, saw me and said, “Oh, I didn’t know you were coming.” For all of Christianne’s love and encouragement over the years, she has always known how to humble me too. (She definitely knew I was coming.)

Thus began five more years of my life in Angel House, also known as my favorite and most challenging season of life to date. 

My room was on the second floor of the house. Living where you work has huge perks: no commute, early mornings in pajamas, seeing people at their softest with sleepy eyes and bedhead. If you get soaked by a two-liter of Coke Zero that explodes in the pantry, you can go upstairs to change and rinse off before cleaning it up, and then once you’re done cleaning it up, you can get directly into bed–no traffic. Living and working at L’Arche is also how I’ve met most of my favorite people; caring, interesting, marvelous people show up here all the time.

Perhaps the greatest gift of being a live-in assistant is also the main challenge: learning. I realized quickly after moving back to Chicago that in order to stay at Angel House, I would have to learn how to set boundaries, which as an avid people pleaser I’d not had much experience doing. I had to learn how to actually communicate with people around me instead of dropping hints and hoping for the best. I finally learned, to my mom’s delight, that sleep is actually important. I became really good at cleaning and inserting hearing aids, and by now I can plunge a toilet like you wouldn’t believe. And I’m still learning how to do all of these things, plus figure out what it means to be a finite, vulnerable, flawed human being in relationship with others. 

In 2022, I became a live-out assistant. While I love my new arrangement and roommates (one husband named Carlo and one kitty named Myrtle), I’ll always miss my days living in Angel House – Cheeto dust in unexpected places, late night chats in the basement, listening to Davey listening to “Miracles Happen” on repeat for days across the hall. When I came to community for the first time all those summers ago, I came because I wanted to help people. I’ve stayed because I need the relationships and the lessons that L’Arche has to teach me… and I suspect I always will.

Molly Tarantino