home-making

We have about a week before we officially set up residence in our new home. I feel like I keep forgetting that this change is so immanent, that our daily lives are going to soon look very different.

I’ve lived in this valley for almost five years, and in our funky little white house for four. We have always talked about how to change it, fix it up, improve it, make it a little less funky. But we never really have, although it has changed so much since I’ve lived here. This is the house we brought two new babies home to, planted way more gardens than any sane people would, crowded our friends into our tiny kitchen for dinner and drinks and stories. In the summers we listen to Joan Zen playing downtown through our open bedroom window, in the winter we haul load after load of firewood through the house to the woodstove to keep us warm, as we watch storms move across the mountains. Mike comes home for lunch most days, I walk the girls to the library for storytime, Amelia opens any door of the house and wanders the yard on her own, visiting the chickens, playing in the sandbox, climbing her willow.

This house is not fancy- it is generous to call it plain. It’s been a good home for the last four years.

So, once again, (because I am my mother's daughter (and my dad's, too, although he doesn't say it, he lives it), I say: ‘Life is an ocean, always in motion.’


Off we go!