House Becoming Home
I don’t know if you have these moments, but I get them from time to time – where everything seems just right in the world – even when so much isn’t right. I had one of those moments last night as I rode Vulcan on his first turn to mow around the new farm.
Jelly Roll and Sabeen are supposed to be outdoor cats. When they snuck in last night, they quietly settled on our bed. Not dumb kitties, these.
He and I were mowing in our orchard – oh, how I love that we have an orchard – and I thought how remarkable that I am now living in this place, calling it home. How did I ever get so blessed?
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Yesterday afternoon, friends came by. People who were dear friends of my mom’s, people who I have known for many years. . . and as we told them about the sale of our old farm, about how it sold in 8 days for more than asking, about how it was bought by a farmer who would use all the work we had done. . . “it all works out.” That’s what I said. And it does. Every time.
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Last night, Philip and I stayed up quite late, doing our best to put those most difficult of things away – pictures on the walls, memorious objects on the shelves. (I don’t really like to call them knick-knacks because they carry more memory than kitsch.) I stood long and stared at walls, listening to what story of our lives we wanted to tell just here. Over our coach, we hung a picture of two dogs in a canoe, a print of a mausoleum against paint-blue sky that I bought in New Orleans on a trip with Mom, and the printer’s box that I fill with tiny objects, each wrapped in memory.
On the mantel in the Reading Room, we have candlesticks that Philip’s grandfather made, a plaque that says “You are living your story” that my dear friend gave me, and two pieces of copper that I remind me of Mom (she loved copper) and Dad, who brought me one of them. Between them all, a painting of an abandoned rowboat hangs – a painting by Philip’s grandmother.
It does not take a great deal of time to make a house a home it seems.
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Just over a year ago, when Philip and I headed north for our honeymoon in Maine, we drove up through this part of the world, and the whole while I thought, “This might just be the most beautiful place on earth.” Farmsteads scattered over rolling hills that lead to the bluest of the Ridge. Long quiet roads where you can see for miles but not around the next curve. The way that roadlines trace stories and houses carry the families that have lived long before them.
Now, here we are – in a house we saw once and knew was ours, the house my father suggested we consider, the house where Berrys, Yowells, Tuckers, and Rudds before us have lived soft and steady.
It is amazing, really, how “it all works out.” But then, well, when you are loved who all of who you are by One who knows all the history behind and before, how could it not?
Come visit, all. Be a part of this story in this place with us.