Houses have feelings. I believe that as much as I believe that calling a place home doesn't always make it feel like home. Places like people either accept you or reject you from the start, welcoming you in or making you feel uncomfortable enough to make you want to leave sooner rather than later.
I have lived, if sometimes you could call it living, in both of these places... Homes I've left that I've had no desire to leave and those I've ran from as if I couldn't flee fast enough from the hounds of hell. Uprooting time and time again searching for something a little more permanent, someplace to stay just a little bit longer, a home to call mine and mine alone.
I sit in my reading room typing away this morning in quiet while my daughter, the dogs and even the cats remain fast asleep. Around me there are empty boxes waiting to be packed, labeled and put by the door in their readiness to go. But I think to myself that it's not quite real yet, this leaving. And it just may be that I won't believe that some other house is going to be my home until I'm crossing its threshold with that first box of whatever magic it is inside that helps to make a house a home.
I dread the thought of taking my pictures down from their walls, rolling the carpets up to carry them down the stairs, and emptying each room until the only part left of me to leave behind is the color I chose to paint them. Golden yellow, coffee and cream, oatmeal with a cinnamon raisin accent wall, sage green for comfort and for KC bright hues of celeron greens and turquoise blues.
This apartment has been a blessing. From the moment I first saw it, I saw past all of the problems both big and small. To me it was like a fairy tale castle high above and away from the rest of the world, safe from the dragons below. I hid here until I learned how to live here and the living has been good.
I am not the woman I was when I landed here with broken wings and broken spirit. And I have learned to let go of the lesson that I was so cruelly and needlessly taught, forced to endure rather than live. The fear I used to feel, the tears I used to cry, the feeling of always needing to look over my shoulder to make sure that no one was there, all of that is gone...
A good home does that for you.
Rebuilding as it repairs.
Protecting as it provides.
Holding the Dream
It hasn't hit me yet. Or at least it doesn't seem quite real. At least not now. Not even with a few half packed boxes scattered through the rooms, half started, hanging open, waiting to be taped shut and labeled with a description of whatever it is inside.
It doesn't feel real at all. I've been waiting so, so long... I'd almost given up. Discouraged by what I wanted, where I needed it to be and what I believed was an impossible wish list of wants that wouldn't be answered.
And yet, miracles... A touch of faith and fate that led me one night to walk by a house that even before I knew it was for sale caused me to stop in my tracks and admire what I saw. Tucked away like a fairy tale cottage, quiet as if it were contemplating great things in the smallest of ways, looking every bit as if it were waiting for something wonderful to happen by. And there I stood, dreaming...
But a girl like me knows a lot of things, namely that dreams seldom become reality. They linger on your mind, tempt you with longing and slowly fade like morning mist rising from a lake.
And I still don't trust myself that it's all for real. I hold back the bulk of my excitement, wanting now the security of my signature across a page, and a firm final handshake that says the deal is done, made and impossible to break. Then and only then, when the keys are in my hand and I'm carrying that first box through the door for the very first time will I believe that this house is finally mine and that I've succeeded in doing what I haven't been able to do for so long...
For the first time ever, I'll be able to give my daughter a place that she can really call home.
Pipe Dreams?
Libraries make me cry. Or to be more specific, my library makes me cry. Or maybe, just maybe I was feeling a bit weepy today and just happened to be at the library when the tears threatened to start rolling down my face. Then again it seems that whenever I go to the library, which mind you this is me we're talking about so the word often does come into play, I always seem to be fighting to keep myself together.
I think it has something to do with walking down the aisles, searching for that ever elusive book and knowing that the one I'm searching for is the one I've been wanting to write and just haven't gotten around to yet. And every time this feeling comes over me, it reminds me of something that Toni Morrison once said, "If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it."
So what am I waiting for?
Freezing On the 4th
For a fourth of July it's freezing. And while I know it's cold, cold enough to throw a little heat around the room by burning a few flames in the fireplace, it still hasn't occurred to me to get up and close the windows. Instead a cool damp breeze blows in through the curtains while I sit wrapped up in my daughter's zerba blanket throw writing down these words and ignoring my cell phone as it rings.
Ignoring it because I know it's my Dad and I know he can only be calling for one thing, to let me know that he's going to the gym and that he expects to see me there. And I've got to admit, for the last month or so I've let myself off of the strict regimen I've been holding myself to for over the past year. Tired may be as tired does, but not going is not going to get me any further from where I am. So I suppose I should motivate and do something besides shiver.
