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Tuesday, June 25, 2013

I keep looking at the photos on my cell phone this morning. I scroll back and forth between the pictures I took of the living room before and after I painted it last night. The living room. Our living room.

We bought a house, for the first time in our lives.

I've been gone such a long time from this space, from my writing. My world has been all I could handle, there was nothing left of me to put my thoughts into words. In this absence we have welcomed amazing joy, and been on a life raft in the middle of an ocean, barely hanging on.

There have been major car accidents, a very serious illness for our baby, postpartum depression for me, layoffs and an apprenticeship graduation, and too many housing moves to count. There have been endless late night discussions about where we should go next, where to stake our claim for the next 3-5 years. There have been endless late night discussions about when the right time is for me to more formally enter the workforce. There have been endless late night discussions about whether I want to go back to school or not. My little virgo temperament does not do well with that amount of flux.

When I entered that house, our house, I began to paint our colors and loving claim it for our own.  As I watched the old colors disappear under ours, It felt like I was placing a cap stone on the chaos of the last 18 months, casting a line towards a future that, while impossible to predict, looks calming from here.

I am hopeful that we will find calm, rhythm and routine, and that my heart can once again expand beyond myself to love others better.