when you're ready to leave the house you love
God has a sense of humor. My book entitled LOVE THE HOUSE YOU'RE IN was released in early March, about a month ago, days before I moved out of the house I loved, where I wrote the book, and into another house, presumably to love. "Isn't that funny!!" so many friends have said. "Do you love the house you're in yet? wink wink!" others have said to me, jokingly, no mockingly, as they watched me unload kids, boxes, groceries, kids, boxes, groceries, on repeat, over the past several weeks. Moving is not funny in any sort of way, but the story is interesting. And the timing is almost ironic.
We loved our little house to pieces, it was a laboratory for all sorts of design projects, including two nurseries for two new babies born while we lived there. But it was time to move on, and closer to school and the perfect next house showed itself after lots and lots of luck, hope & prayer. The most perfect part of this is that I got to buy it from someone who loved her home very dearly. And I got to talk to her about her time in her house, and hear how she made it, each square inch. It was the most extraordinary experience. The woman I bought my new house from lived much of the message in my book (without ever reading it) and shares much of the passion I feel for home. Her home was her heart. It was hard for her to just put up a sign and let it go
(Francis dismantling my beloved old and gold wall.)
.So we didn't do it that way. We bonded. We talked about the house in great detail over email and phone and then she showed it to me herself. How great it was to hear all the stories and decisions, first hand! I cried when I met her and saw the house after she had painted it so well in my mind. And once I realized I trully loved the house and not just it's owner, Francis and I bought it.
Now I can only hope I can pass on my quirky little button of a house, the one I have now dutifully dismantled and depersonalized, to someone in a similar way. And while we wait I find myself again at the very, very beginning - the pre-beginning, not knowing where to start, or how, and almost going crazy wanting badly for this house to be MINE but looking a lot like someone else's. Even though the someone else in this case is lovely, that primal desire for things to be reflective of me and our collective story, not to mention elegantly and efficiently set up for busy daily life with four children, is there. But then I remember. In. Due. Time. Like a plant, a great house starts unseen, like seeds underground - in this case, in the mind - with the thinking, pondering, saving of money, sorting out best options, and musing that can take months or years. So while the house currently feels strange and foreign and disorienting, not to mention tiring, its also full of possibility, new challenges and lots of great projects for the next ?? years - what's not to love there?
