It Feels Like...

I have recently achieved a deeply rooted desire…My husband and I bought our first home. If I may put it into terms that will help you understand…we have signed on the dotted line (in what seemed like blood) to pay for this house, even if it takes us until the Messiah returns! It has all been rather surreal. We waited a long time to be able to do such a thing. Many of our friends began the home buying process decades ago. But, then again, that seems to be how it goes on occasion…I'm always a newbie of some sort.
While we are embarking upon our 5th month in the new house, there are many things to do… I have walls that desperately need a new coat of paint, and even a bit of patching. It would be a grand step forward to just hang some wall décor! I have 4 rooms with boxes that need to be unpacked, and put away. Taming down the previous owners landscaping is a definite must. There is every form of plant life running amuck in my little patch of sod…how does a soul manage said piece of sod? (Short of spending 40 hours a week doing so, anyway? >=I )
Lest I give you the impression that I am second guessing our purchase, I can assure you that the move was greatly needed. We are a family of seven people…five of which are adult sized…and two large dogs. We had lived the previous six years in a much smaller, three bedroom house…
When we began renting it, we were elated! Even though renting isn't buying, we were thankful to be in a house and NOT an apartment, or, duplex! There was a fenced in backyard for the kids, a fireplace for chilly evenings, and three very necessary bathrooms… But, it wasn't OUR home, the place where the kids could pose in front of the mantle for posterity. There wasn't a freedom to remove certain design flaws or make any type of statement that said "Lisa lives here"…
You know, I actually drove past the old house a few days ago to drop my daughter off at her friends. As I rolled past I had a moment of regret. Now maybe that's a strong word, and not as accurate as it should be, but it does come close. For a quick, hot, second, I missed the place…the way the rain sounded on the roof, the familiarity of it all.
And isn't that often how life is? We strive and aspire to new adventures and places! We work so hard to arrive at what we believe is what we want, and then… well, we find ourselves in the midst of getting what we chased after. All of a sudden the newness of our achievement can offset us. We start to look back over our shoulder as we remember… and we wonder if we will ever feel comfortable in our new surroundings.
The sun rises on the front side of our new home. We have three cape-cod style windows that catch the light as it bursts over the neighborhood rooftops. When that happens, our loft and family room below are lit up with the most glorious shade of amber. This morning as I scooped up an armful of delightfully pungent family laundry, I rushed thru the light, toward the washing machine in the basement. Tossing the detergent and fabric softener into the appropriate dispensers and slamming down the machine door I turned to race up the stairs to throw on the coffee when… I felt a familiar place. I looked around at the toys scattered on the stairs, my husbands grass cutting tennis shoes and socks, textbooks left out after homework, and that amazing, amber, light…
Don't quite know when it happened, but it feels like home!