What is a house anyway?

Went definition hunting and found these:

House: a dwelling that serves as living quarters for one or more families; a building in which something is sheltered or located

Home: an environment offering affection and security; family: a social unit living together

Each of these definitions can be found for either term.

One of my pet peeves has to do with the interchangeability of the words “house” and “home”. When I was a  kid, we’d go out for a Sunday drive, or to visit family / friends. If my mom or dad saw a house that was particularly appealing,  I would hear, “What a lovely home.”

No, it might have been a lovely house, depending on your architectural preferences, but it may or may not have been a lovely home.

Home has further implications. Home is about more than the structure in and of itself.

Is it a home if no one lives in it, or is it just a house? If the people living in the house are having difficulties with relationships, do we say it’s an “unhappy house situation?”  Don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say, “He comes from a broken house.”

So what?

We’ve been talking to real estate agents since the beginning of May about putting our house on the market. Makes sense; we don’t live in it, but we’re still paying the mortgage. The general consensus among the different agents was that it would sell eventually, but it would sell quicker if we put some work into it. Paint every wall “safe beige”, (don’t you love that phrase?), replace the porch railings, replace the deck, fix up the landscaping. Last year we gave the house a new roof, new siding, new windows and new garage doors. We are out of “fixing up the house” money.

We talked to contractors, got estimates on the suggested improvements, thinking that maybe we could do one or two small things.  Still couldn’t afford to do the work, and afraid to put the house on the market unless we did.

Last week we took a deep breath and, Thursday night, listed our house. The real estate industry is almost exclusively internet-driven these days. The listing goes into some magic database and voila! Overnight it’s visible to every prospective home-buyer in the civilized world.

See that: I said “home” buyer, not “house” buyer.

There were four or five hits on our listing over the weekend. No big deal.

Monday afternoon I got a call from an agent, requesting permission to show the house Tuesday afternoon between 4 and 5. “Of course, go ahead, it’s vacant.”, I said, while my brain was screaming in terror at the thought of someone looking at the ratty deck, the walls in desperate need of paint, “safe beige” or otherwise, the outdated bathroom fixtures.

Tuesday night I got a call from our listing agent. We had an offer on the house, a serious offer, from the guy that looked at it the day before. The very first person to look at it. Buyer has sold his house, closing the 29th, and wants to close on buying our house on the 30th.

Of June.

So, last night we signed the seller’s contract documents.

I know the butterflies won’t go away until everything is completed, so I’m remaining calm about it. Really, I am. There’s still the inspection to be done, and I’m sure we’ll have to fix or negotiate some things. We had already dropped the price to compensate for deck and porch, but it ain’t over til it’s over. However, the thought of not having a mortgage, in light of current economy and future economic trends, is almost incomprehensible in appeal right now. I should be thrilled at the prospect.

I mean, it’s just a house, right? An empty house.

This morning I had Wubby go over and move the remaining stuff stored in the basement away from the walls so the home inspector can get to them, just in case we can’t get the 1-800-GotJunk people to come before the inspection. (Why do we call them home inspectors? They don’t inspect the intangibles that make “house” become “home”; they inspect structural issues.)

And I started thinking.

We bought that house 20 years ago, when I was pregnant with Wubby. We were so excited to have bought our first house that we spent the first night there sleeping on the living room floor in sleeping bags! One of the things we liked about the house was that one of the rooms was already painted as a nursery, with big stenciled teddy bears on the walls. Yeah, we painted over them once Wubby left baby-hood. The house also had 2 working fireplaces, one in the living room and one in the basement. One day we were going to finish that basement room and make it a library / office / whatever. Never got around to it, though. Little girl came along, work got complicated, being “sandwiched” between our kids’ needs and our parents’ needs got very complicated. My health got very, very complicated.

In other words, life happened while we were thinking about those plans to finish the basement, rebuild the deck, paint the walls.

As we signed the contract last night, it occurred to me that we closed the deal when we bought the house on June 30, 1989. And exactly 20 years later, crossing my fingers as I type this (which is quite a talent if you think about it), we will close another deal on that house, and it will belong to someone else.

And the tears won’t stop.

I’ve lived in that house longer than in any other dwelling in my entire life. For the 28 years prior to buying that house, I lived in 11 other dwellings. Never stayed in one long enough to get emotionally attached to it.

Until now.

It feels like I’m losing a dear friend. I’ll still see the house almost every day; it’s only a mile away. But we won’t be friends any more.

Maybe it’s because that house is the only one that intersected with my life for more than a few years, or months even.

Maybe it’s the 20-year thing. For a generation, I had a house that was mine, love it or hate it. And I did both.

Maybe it’s because it was my kids’ first house, and they actually lived in it long enough so that, when they go off to live their own lives, they will remember that house as the one “where they grew up.”

Maybe it’s some weird mid-life issue. I seem to being having quite a few of those right now.

I can’t really explain it. I just know that, when I think about it all, I tear up and get all stuffy-nosed. Kids think I’m having terrible allergies.

So, this friend I’m leaving behind, was it just a house or was it a home?

Yes.

 

Enchanted

Little girl lives in jeans, t-shirts (mostly black), mis-matched socks and fluorescent Converse sneakers. Recently she decided to change her hair color to something a bit more remarkable than mouse brown and decided auburn looked pretty good. So, off we go to Wallyworld, looking for auburn Miss Clairol or whatever. Turned out very nice.

Yesterday it was time for a touch-up. So we gathered up the hair-coloring paraphanalia and went to work. I had been watching “Out of Africa”, and when it was over “Enchanted” came on. Now, I’m not much interested in recent Disney movies, and this one had all the indications of being particularly annoying. But I needed LG to sit still and it fit the bill for that.

I got hooked.

As my blog title implies, I’m a sucker for a good Cinderella story.

Make that a Cinderella story. Good is gravy.

We finished the hair color job. Then we finished watching the movie. LG was totally engrossed in the movie.

I was totally engrossed in LG.

She’s beautiful. Sophisticated auburn, mouse brown…

Enchanting.

 

Quick post

October 31, 2008 concert in Kernersville, NC

I was in Cielo last week hanging out with the Dominican (and American) ladies. It was a great week, exhausting, lots of highs and a couple of lows…..tons of pictures to process and words to write.

For now, check out this interview with my awesome cousin Brian.

 

Christmas Gypsies

I guess I’ve always been a Christmas gypsy.

When I was little, Christmas was always at my Grandma’s. Or, Grandmas’, or whatever the plural-possessive form is for “grandma.” Christmas Eve was at my Grandma’s house. We’d spend the night so Santa could find me, then Christmas Day was at my Great-Grandma’s. Then we’d head back to Grandma’s, and maybe back home Christmas night if it wasn’t too far.

My Great-Grandma lived in the mountains. She and my Great-Grandpa ran a country store complete with pot-bellied stove. They sold everything from candy to clothes to farm implements and gas. This summer when we were in Todd, NC we went to the Todd General Store. The minute I walked in I was flooded with memories from Great-Grandpa’s store. Shelves on the wall behind the counter, the push-button cash register, the creaky wood floors.

Christmas Day was all about family and food. There were the three children, around 13 grand-children and close to 20 great-grandchildren. I don’t think we were ever all there at one time, but we came pretty close. There were people and food everywhere: in the kitchen, dining room, living room…I think I even ate a Christmas dinner or two in my great-grandparents’ bedroom. A typical Christmas dinner went something like this: country ham, turkey, biscuits, gravy, mashed potatoes, green beans, macaroni and cheese, sweet potato casserole, creamed corn or corn pudding, rice pudding, broccoli casserole, rolls, pickles, preserves, cakes, pies, custards….

Their house had a porch across the front and down one side. There was a spring house, complete with dipping gourds, and a separate porch across the back. Part of the side porch became their bathroom when they added plumbing. I think it was sometime in the late 60’s or early 70’s when they got a telephone, party line. There was a small spring house in the front yard where they’d leave the full milk can to be picked up by the dairy truck, and where the empty can would be returned.

All of us gypsies would gather there on the mountain, eat until we had to get horizontal, exchange a few gifts and just visit. If the weather was nice the younger ones (my generation) would play outside on the porch swing or in the creek or the spring houses. If there was snow we’d play…outside on the porch swing or in the creek or the spring houses. The grown-ups would be in clumps in various rooms, talking about farming or work or us kids. Around 4:00 in the afternoon families would start saying their goodbyes and heading for their cars to start for home. All the goodbye-ing would last an hour or so, and we’d finally hit the road about sundown.

When hubby and I got married in 1984 we continued the gypsy Christmas: Christmas Eve at grandma’s, Christmas Day (morning) at great-grandma’s, and end up at hubby’s parents in the evening, then back to our own home. We probably traveled a couple hundred miles round trip. It was doable, until the kids came along. The trip to my great-grandma’s became an every-other-year sort of thing until she passed away in 2004. In its place was the trip from North Carolina to my parents, then my grand-parents, then hubby’s parents and sibs.

And so it goes.

Today we made the gypsy trip from North Carolina up the mountain where my great-grandparents are buried, past the towns where my grandparents and my dad now rest, to the town where hubby grew up, where his parents also now rest. Today my oldest sister-in-law said she was carrying on the matriarchal tradition of wrapping gifts at 5:00 AM and cooking non-stop from then until everyone finally arrived around 2:00 this afternoon. Again, we exchanged a few gifts, visited a little, started saying our goodbyes around 4:00 and finally got on the road about an hour later.

Each year it gets a little harder to put my gypsy shoes on Christmas morning.

And each year I know that, if I don’t, another year could pass before we see some of our family again, unless we’re forced together to say a final goodbye to someone else.

So, we wear the gypsy shoes.

 

2:29 AM and all is as it should be…sorta

Christmas Eve.

I’ve always loved Christmas Eve. The day’s events start out early, frantically. Way back, we’d spend Christmas at my grandmother’s house and would inevitably need to run to Leggett’s for something. Leggett’s had everything, it was right there on Main Street, very small-town Americana.

Now Leggett’s is gone, replaced by a Belk store at the local mall-o-rama, where you can’t ever find anything in any department without first knowing who designed it. Sorry, I don’t shop by label, I shop by function.

Anyway, we’d get back from town to find my grandma cooking, or watching the soaps while various food items were cooking themselves. Supper was at 5:00, always. My grandpa’s store was open on Christmas Eve, so he might be working that evening, but he always had supper at 5:00. So there you go.

And it was a typical Southern holiday spread: ham, mashed potatoes, green beans, macaroni and cheese, deviled eggs, various other veggies in various states of cooked-ness.

Then there was dessert: applesauce cake, pecan pie, fruit cake that was actually good because someone make it right after Thanksgiving and soaked it brandy ’til Christmas.

There were quite a few of us grand-kids, and we were responsible for cleaning up after supper, which had to be completed before the commencing of the gift distribution, which was organized chaos.

Things changed as we grew up. Sometimes the family’s numbers dwindled as we started going to our boyfriend or girlfriend’s house; sometimes the numbers increased, when our friends came with us to Christmas Eve supper. Then the great-grandbabies started coming.

Once everyone was stuffed, all the gifts opened (except for Santa’s), all the wrapping paper gathered up and placed in the burn barrel, things started to quiet down, families would leave for their own homes, the grown-ups would talk while we got ready for bed.

Finally, around 11:00 PM, it was calm.

We still have a few things to do around here Christmas Eve. Actually “a few” is an understatement if you include the moving tasks we still haven’t finished…or started. So things aren’t quite as they should be; not just yet. But we’ll get there, as we do every year without fail.

I think about the first Christmas, whenever it actually was. The quietness of Bethlehem that night as Joseph and Mary tried to find somewhere to rest, only to find no open doors. Even now, as we drive home from Christmas Eve service at church, it fascinates me to see all the stores closed, the streets devoid of the snarling traffic, and I think about this event we call Christmas. The birth of a child, during the night, in an animal pen. Here we are, 2000 years later, running around doing our “holiday-ing”, as one retailer put it this year. (Did you ‘holiday’ was a verb? Neither did I.) But as the hours dwindle down and we finally go home, a quietness settles over the cities, towns and crossroads of our country, as well as those of most other countries. How could something so seemingly insignificant as the birth of a single child, 2000 years ago, in a barn, still bring everything in our world to a screeching halt?

Christmas Eve. The calm before the storm of last minute preparations, before the calm as dawn approaches, carrying with it the joy that is Christmas.

I love Dr. Suess’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas because it communicates these same ideas that I stumble through with such ease, sweetness and simplicity.

This Christmas probably has more than its fair share of “grinches”: economic crisis, political upheavals, and plain old garden-variety evil. But Thursday morning the sun will come up.

So he paused – and the Grinch put a hand to his ear. And he did hear a sound rising over the snow. It started in low… then it started to grow.

But… but this sound wasn’t sad. Why, this sound sounded glad. Every Who down in Whoville, the tall and the small, was singing without any presents at all. He hadn’t stopped Christmas from coming, it came. Somehow or other, it came just the same.

He puzzled and puzzled till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before! Maybe Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store. Maybe Christmas… perhaps… means a little bit more!

Welcome, Christmas, bring your cheer. Cheer to all Whos far and near. Christmas Day is in our grasp so long as we have hands to clasp. Christmas Day will always be just as long as we have we. Welcome Christmas while we stand, heart to heart and hand in hand.

 

Remembering is the hardest part…and the best

Before we officially move, I need to pack up some stuff that didn’t make it to Mom’s new home in the mountains. Lots of bric-a-brac, “frou-frou” in the Interior Design profession. Some clothes, linens…stuff like that.

And things sneak up on me, just like that photo of my dad at the river did on Thanksgiving at my brother-in-law’s house.

I found the rehearsal schedule for the only ballet recital I was ever in. I was in second grade.

There was a skirt / blouse ensemble that my mom purchased over twenty years ago from an exclusive dress shop in Roanoke. She wore it to work. Then I wore it to work. Then it went back to her closet, so she must have worn it to work some more.

Mom made a smocked dress for me when I was about six. Found that. And a yellow dress I wore for a portrait when I was a little younger.

Her high school yearbook from her sophomore year was in a box in a closet. I look at those pictures now and think it looks like they were taken a hundred years ago. Then I look at my own yearbooks, stacked in the floor in my living room, waiting to be boxed up, and think the same thing.

During high school, then again in college, my piano teachers would pull out some old nasty-looking piece of sheet music they’d played in college and give it to me. The pages were always brown, torn, held together by pieces of dried Scotch tape. My own music from college looks just the same.

I stumbled upon a pink dress box, lined with tissue paper, containing a few Christmas ornaments left from the ones we used when I was little. Always on a cedar tree from a farm somewhere. And,  in the same box, genuine icicles. The long stringy tinsel things we used to put on the tree after it was all decorated to make everything sparkle. Then a cat or dog would pull a few off the tree, chow down, and make the yard sparkle all year long!

Dress patterns for dresses my mom make for me to wear to school. Some of them are hilarious; others could be made and worn today and no one would know they were 30-year-old patterns.

Other craft patterns: for a red sweater mom knitted for my son when he was a toddler. It has owls on the yoke; for slouch bags she sewed, and taught Domincan women how to sew. Doilies. Lots of doilies.

Cassette tapes, from Country to Classical. All outsourced now, to CDs and MP3s. Even a few LPs, being revived by new gadgets w/ USB connections so you can record your old LPs onto your computer, scratches and all, I guess.

Picture frames, bowling balls, carnival glass my Grandmother won at fairs over the years.

Stuff. Individually, all these things are just stuff. The neat thing is that I can pick something up, hold it in my hands, and remember. “Oh, that was real! I thought I’d dreamed it, or imagined it. But here’s proof!”

Individual pieces of my history, boxed and stacked and spread out all over the place.

But when I add them all up, they amount to, well, LIFE.

Or lives actualy.

My grandparents; my parents; me; my children.

And one day, their children.

And their children.

Today I’ll wander back into the past, remember, reconcile and take another step into tomorrow.

 

it sneaks up on you when you’re not looking

Grief.

Again.

It’s been four years since my dad died, in early November 2004. That first Thanksgiving was, um, difficult because I was behind the locked doors for a few days.

But each year has been a litle easier. The bad memories, the ones of illness and hospitals and waiting for hours, uncertain about what was coming next, have begun to fade. The good memories, of Thanksgivings past, spent at Oak Island or home in Virginia, are becoming more vivid. Like the year we stayed up until 0′dark-thirty in the morning watching My Fair Lady, or the year Daddy went to WalMart on Black Friday to buy….cookies.

So here we are. It’s 2008, Mom has remarried to a wonderful man with a huge family. I’m getting to know my new step-brothers and step-sisters and their families….I may need to buy Christmas cards ’cause I don’t think I have enough in my stash! Our parents’ wedding celebration last weekend was a trip, literally and figuratively. Parties are way more fun with lots of people, and there were lots of us.

Thursday we traveled to spend Thanksgiving with Hubby’s family in Virginia. Lots more people. It’s funny, but I actually met Hubby’s brother before I met Hubby, in high school band. And his girlfriend, now his wife of way more years than I should admit. So when we get together the topic of high school or high school acquaintances will invariably come up. One of Hubby’s nieces found some old photo albums and started flipping through them. What a marvelous time! We laughed at our 80’s haircuts, about how skinny we all were back then. We looked at wedding pictures, bridesmaids in a rainbow of pastel-colored dresses, all made by the brides mother. Does anyone do that anymore? It’s so NOT Vera Wang.

Then there were albums of candids from all over. Niece found a picture of hubby and me taken on Halloween in, oh, about 1982. Definitely before we got married. I found a dress, hat and some beads and went to the party as a flapper. (And yes, I can do the Charleston.) Hubby, well, I think this was the year had put on mismatched suit pants and jacket, white socks, loafers, and put a bag over his head and declared himself to be the “Unknown Comic.” (And if you reach way back into the cobwebs of your 1970’s mind and retrieve the Gong Show, you’ll remember the Unknown Comic. Of course, Gene Gene the Dancing Machine was my personal favorite. I digress.) Niece has challenged me to scan the photo and put it on facebook as my profile picture, which will be done before the end of business today.

There were other pictures from 1982. Various Hubby-family functions, cute babies, etc. But there was one event that year that brought both of our families together for a party: my college graduation. We used to have a cabin on New River where we’d go on weekends to rest, eat, fish, eat, visit with river friends, eat. And in the summer the river was perfect for tubing. So we had a graduation party for me at the cabin, and hubby’s family (only he was boyfriend then) were all there. There were pictures of the river, which is lovely. There were pictures of us tubing the river. There was a picture of my graduation cake: Garfield. I love orange tabby cats, even the cartoon variety. Then someone turned the page and there it was: a picture of three of the “adults” in attendance that day, all standing next to the river in a semi-circle, laughing. Two of them were immediately recognizable: Hubby’s parents. Both of them passed away in 2004 as well. The third person was standing at a funny angle, face in 3/4 perspective. So I looked a little closer and…it was Daddy. Smiling, his hands seeming to be in motion, as he was known to do when telling a story or making a point.

And he was young. Younger than I am now. He looked so happy, not a care in the world. He loved the river, and my heart broke for him when, many years later, it became too difficult for him to keep up the maintenance on the property and he and Mama sold it.

I looked at the picture and managed not to cry, but to remember the fun we had that day. I missed my dad, again. But I was also thankful to have had him, thankful to see that his influence could be seen in other peoples’ lives, people who weren’t my family then, but have become dear family to me in the years since.

Grief sneaks up on you when you’re not looking for it. You turn a page, empty a drawer, rummage through the basement looking for the yard rake, and something catches your eye.

But other things can sneak up on you when you’re not looking: love, joy, friendship.

My mom found new love, and while I wasn’t looking, I found friendship and joy.

 

connections

My mom got married yesterday, in a private ceremony at her new husband’s church. They exchanged their vows in a prayer chapel adorned with his woodwork. I haven’t seen it yet, but it sounds beautiful.

And seems to be a very appropriate place.

Daddy was a craftsman with wood, and glass. He re-worked all of the pew racks in their home church. He built a “treasure box” that the church uses when collecting special offerrings. He built a lectern used by Ruth Graham Lotz. His equipment has been here since he died, but is now on its way to one of my new step-brothers, also a woodworker.

I’m learning, in bits and pieces, about my new family. We seem to have a great deal in common: music, ministry, backgrounds in computers and technology. Next Saturday we’ll all meet for the first time. I’ve been getting to know a couple of my new ’steps’ via e-mail and Facebook. Connecting through technology.

But, the thought of making new connections the old-fashioned way, in person, is a bit scary. Here I sit, smack dab in the middle of mid-life, having been an only brat until now and, suddenly, I have 5 step-siblings. And their children. And their children’s children. For the first time in my entire life, I have to share my mom with siblings. It feels strange somehow, and at the same time, appropriate, if that makes any sense.

We’ll all meet next weekend, an early Thanksgiving. And there’s a lot to be thankful for.

Life and love.

Family, old and new.

Connections.

I have to admit that the thought of meeting a houseful of new people scares me. Although no one I say this to actually believes me, I am a shy person by nature. I remember admitting that a couple of years ago, at Thanksgiving actually, and seeing my mom’s surprised reaction. Meeting new people has always been problematic, probably stemming from being the ‘new kid in the class’ more than a few times. New kids are sort of like substitute teachers: they’re not treated very well at first, but the ones that stick around eventually make a place for themselves.

Thank heavens for computers and Facebook. I’m slowly but surely making connections, putting faces to names, making tentative advances to some of these people I’ve not yet met but have something so significant in common with.

It’s strange for me to think of my mom, married to someone else. it took a great deal of faith and courage for her to take baby steps toward making new connections, and those steps have brought her to a new family. She’s connected to a new world.

And, so am I.

 

tale of the pink hippopotamus

Long ago (last weekend) in a strange and foreign land (the mall) there lived a pink hippopotamus. Actually ‘lived’ isn’t quite right….

Long ago in a strange and foreign land, a pink hippopotamus was being held hostage in a glass prison by an evil claw. Many brave villagers attempted to free the poor hippo from the prison where the evil claw held her captive along with many other exotic animals. Alas, none was able to vanquish the evil claw in battle, and the pink hippo sufferred in silence until, one magical day (last Saturday) a brave warrior and his family came to the strange land in search of sturdy footwear (running shoes) for the brave warrior.

The search was long and fruitless, so the entire family stopped at the local tavern (the food court) in search of food, drink and a respite from the throngs of other villagers also searching for trinkets and tasty bits. Upon aquiring grog and meat pies (Sonic and some Japanese stuff) the weary troupe settled down for a brief repast. As they enjoyed their meal (yeah, right….mall food) and observed the antics of some of the younger villagers, the matriarch of the family (that would be, um, me) was taken aback at the sight of the imprisoned pink hippopotamus.

It should be noted here that the family matriarch holds a special affinity in her heart for the noble hippopotamus, having been summarily equated to the beast many years ago by her young suitor, now her soulmate and patriarch of the family. It should also be noted that the comparison between beast and maiden was made in jest and endearment, whereas now the similarities are a bit more, um, veritable.

In a brave attempt to free the pink hippo from its glass prison, the brave warrior offerred to challenge the evil claw to a duel. (Actually, I dared the Wubby to try and get the hippo from the claw game and gave him 4 quarters.) The battle ensued. Both sides fought heartily, and although the young warrior was indeed brave in his quest against the evil claw, he was defeated. He returned to the family to regain his strength (finish eating the Japanese stuff) and possibly prepare for one final bout with the enemy (if anyone had any more quarters.)

After fashioning one more weapon to use against the evil claw (yep, I had 2 more quarters mixed in with the Dominican pesos in my wallet) the young warrior went back into battle, his sister the princess attending to him as he fought. The elders could not bear to face the carnage, so they looked away and prayed for the safety of the warrior, princess and humble hippo.

Moments passed. Tension mounted. Would the warrior vanquish the claw and free the hippo? Or would the evil claw again best the warrior and take his weapons?? (Would we ever get out of the mall????)

An eerie silence settled over the tavern, until, suddenly a cry of victory arose from the warrior as he snatched the hippo from the jaws of death and delivered it to his matriarch.

(Actually, after grabbing the hippo with the claw, dropping it into the drawer-thingy and pulling it out of the whatever-you-call-it, he tossed it across the food court to me and, as I reached out to catch it, I managed to hit hubby in the head with it.)

Having rescued the pink hippo, the family continued the quest for appropriate footwear and also aquired some recent broadsheets for perusal at a later date. As matriarch and princess wandered from one merchant stall to another, villagers looked on in amazement at the happy hippo. The princess, though, was somewhat subdued by the presence of the hippo among the clan. (You know it’s embarrassing for a 14-year-old girl to be seen walking in the mall, with her mom who is carrying a stuffed animal.)

Gathering their parcels, everyone left for home, where the pink hippopotamus now lives in freedom from the claw and has been befriended by the large family feline who, upon seeing the lovely fluffiness of the hippo’s pink coat, became immediately enchanted by it and now likes to cuddle up with it as he settles in for a long after-dinner nap.

And so, patriarch, matriarch, warrior, princess, feline and hippo now live in harmony in the ancestral cottage.

Until sometime soon, when we pack up all our stuff and move down the road.

Poor hippopotamus might wish she was back in the mall before it’s all over.

 

tree

We’ve lived in this house for 19 years. When we bought it there were 3 trees in the front yard: a miscellaneous pine that had been a Christmas tree but was dying fast, a Bradford pear, and a maple tree.

The dying pine was the first to go.

When our son was about three we decorated the maple tree for Easter. I picked him up so he could hang a plastic egg from the top branch.

The Bradford got bigger and bigger over the years. Hurricane Fran took part of it. Later another portion split away. Then an ice storm finished it off.

The maple tree is beautiful now. It’s leaves are tinged with orange and red, almost like God took a dry paintbrush and dabbed tiny bits of color on the edges of the leaves. Every day the color grows brighter and the green fades a little more. The robins and the hummingbirds have moved out for now, but will most certainly return in the spring.

I look at the tree, see how much it’s grown over the years, and compare notes. My son has grown from a chubby baby to the young man he is now, learning to find his way in college while still managing to find his way home on a fairly regular basis. My little preemie girl has grown into the beautiful, tender-hearted young woman she is now. Hubby has picked up a pound or two, his hair greying in that way that looks distinguished in men and frumpy in women, still the high school freshman I met in Mrs. Calloway’s English class, got to know better in Miss Watkins’ physics class the next year, fell head-over-heels for the year after that. It watched him struggle to find his way, to a career and to God.

The maple tree has witnessed our grief as, one by one, grandparents and then parents left us until my mom was the only one remaining. It has witnessed our joy at the births of our children, their various birthday parties held in the yard or the driveway. It stood as a silent witness as I left each morning for work, hoping for a better day than the one before, and as I came home each evening disappointed. Now it gives its shade for me to sit under to read. It’s branches are high enough that I can mow the grass under it without having to duck to avoid being swiped in the face. My husband, son and daughter have grown so much over the years into the people who bless my life now. I look at myself and wonder if I’ve grown any, in any way that really matters.

But the maple continues to grow and change with the years and seasons.

We’ll be moving soon, just a mile or so down the road. It’s exciting to think of how this has all come about, with my mom finding someone to love, someone to love her in return. It’s also a bit overwhelming to think of moving after so many years, of the logistics of combining and rearranging not just two households, but three, as she moves into a new (to her, anyway) home, we move from this house to her house, and this house gets more sprucing up for someone new to move in. We’re planning to lease this house since the market is so bad, maybe selling it when things improve.

There are some things in the yard that I’ll transplant at least parts of: some iris I got from my sister-in-law, primroses from my aunt, stuff like that. And the monster wedding bell plant.

I can’t take the maple tree with me. It will stay here and watch over the house, observing the new people who will be living here just as it has watched over us. it will tell them about us, and maybe offer them comfort in their daily trials. Comfort it learned as it took care of us and our trials.

I’ll miss the maple tree.

I hope it misses me too, just a little.