what happened was we moved. and not in the ordinary way, it took about 3 years. which in hindsight was excruciating. we found an amazing place with an old, old, little house. we called my uncle to see what he thought. he's a contractor, a state inspector and well... my uncle, so we figured we could trust him. there was no way to salvage the place, it didn't even have a foundation, it was built as a summer cottage in 1925. he said to knock it down and start over. i was pregnant with our second child and we didn't really want to do that, but every time we stood in the yard we wanted to stay, so we went for it; she was four months old when we signed the papers. then there were the permits.... tons of permits. we're in a protected area and on a lake so the town and the state were involved and well, imagine the dmv but slower and with more politics. i handled most of the paperwork. then i did most of the everything else handling of the tangible parts with two small kids in tow, while tom did the figuring and finagling parts along with his whole full time work support a family gig. it was amazing, exhausting and terrifying all at the same time. and that was just to get it built.
october 2008, r is almost 3
march 2010
then we moved in. and i thought: finally, it's over, we can relax. but that's not how it worked. to say the adjustment was hard on my people would be using vocabulary poorly. it was insane. my intense, brilliant boy went berserk, the independent baby girl clung.... everyone's center was knocked off balance. we moved on december 3, 2010. somewhere around october 15th 2011 i felt the shift of everyone finally feeling like we belong here, we were finally settling in. i kept eating chocolate everyday just to be sure.
then about a week after i felt us all shift into this new place we got slammed with an insane october snowstorm, had no power for days, nj was a mess. the trees still had their leaves, the weight of the snow just snapped the branches off. it was crazy. some of them had lost all of their branches and they laid in a circle surrounding the trunk. it was a sad time for trees. it was a very unsettling time for people who love trees. the day after our power came back we flew to phoenix for my brother's wedding. we came home to a 6th birthday, thanksgiving, the holidaze. AND THEN phew, january; but our centers were still oscillating.
our first christmas 2010. i did the masonry on the fireplace myself. i loved building the hearth of my home with my own hands. i kept thinking about it as hearth=heart=warmth, i also kept thinking of charles ingalls building his hearths, i felt connected to humans building homes from animal skin tents to log cabins, it was amazing to do. it was also really exhausting.
july 2012, z 4, r 6 1/2
it is a beautiful and strange thing to never want to go anywhere anymore. i was born with wanderlust in my blood, tom was too. i've lived a lot of places, i've never wanted to stay anywhere, i've never really felt like i've wanted to.
i do now. we do now.
it feels weird to love a house, a stationary place so much. we love it here. here at these coordinates but also here in this space and time where we've chosen a life and a place to live it that supports everything we believe about how we want to raise our family, spending as much time together and enjoying each other within the pleasures of nature as we can.
i guess that's why it feels so good; it's home, an imagined home come true.
.......
we didn't get ice this year so tom was able to sail in every calendar month; that's him out there at the end of the rainbow and on christmas.
he also loves to be teaching the kids
the kids love being on and in the water
.......
*when i say last year i mean february 2011, i started writing this then, i'm still working on finding time for complete thoughts.
as i publish this today, i realize it's 7/28, i like that.
