Little Life
We are in the process of buying a house virtually twice the size of this one. This means that we will no longer have the quaint little life; bath toys and hair dryers in the same bathroom, the avalanche of winter coats in the 9 inch deep closets, our chubby kitty with no room to really exert her inner cheetah. My sis and her hub recently just moved from an apartment to a house and she says that she misses him when he's on the third floor. I would tease her about this except that when Geoff was walking this contractor through the new house, I was on the third floor changing Clara and could not make out any of the conversation.
The new house, the old house. We're calling Duval St. our "old" house even though we've only lived here for 2yrs and 1mo. So begins the life between the old and the new. As we pack, I am reminded of a friend who loved to pack for trips and described it like "wrapping presents for yourself when you get there." It probably says a lot about you, your style of "leave-taking," as Li Young Lee the poet calls it. My style of leave-taking is that I have no style. I'm watching Ms. Hoke, our neighbor, prepare to leave her home of sixty years. She suffers from emphysema, the price, I guess of being an elegant Germantown woman of the forties. She is in her eighties now. I bring her dinner twice a week and she gives me the Times after she reads it. She exudes dignity in her leave-taking. She asked the mailman to bring her 20 change of address forms. The last time she moved, your change of address form was the same thing you sent to your friends to say that you were moving. She steadily has collected her boxes and she's held on to the business sections of the Times so she can wrap her trinkets. I want to possess that same diligence. I am probably going to just throw the bookshelves in the van, books still in there. We're only moving 500 yards away. Yes, in the mix of moving clothes, there will be loads of dirty laundry. My mantra: take care of people first, things last. So, a trip to The Franklin Institute for three stir-crazy children will have to trump energetic rounds of precision packing. Nursing a teeny girl will have to come before feverish labelling sprees. Building lego rockets has to come before culling the business cards.
I have this confidence that we will get packed. Manny and Benici have tied up bundles of their books and Manny was rigging up a contraption by which he can attach the bundles onto his scooter. Benicio has dubbed the closet in their new bedroom at the new house, "The Boys Club." Little Clara Margot will probably not remember this house at all. Like Benici, she'll probably take her first steps just after we move. Benici's first steps were at Geoff's Grandparents' house in Brookhaven. I wept because they were not in OUR house and because neither of those granparents were in that house ot witness them. This house is special for her because she was born HERE. But the new house will be special for her because we believe that it is our "stead" as Geoff calls it. It will be what 1610 was for me, the ancestral home, the rooms and layout that still are in my dreams. The hope is to have many great firsts at the new house. So far the new house has been our first rehab project, our first independent financial endeavor of this magnitude, our first collaborative design project of this magnitude. It has been a real first for us in terms of first stress-induced insomnia and frankly, I think this process has grown us up tremendously.
We live by the verse, "To whom much is given, much is also required." We see this house as God's lavish gift to us and as our friends around us are teaching us, we want to extend as much as possible the hand of hospitality. So if we served our community adequately with 1200 sq. ft, with 2200sq. ft. we want to swing for the fence when it comes to loving folks. We could each have our own bedroom if we wanted!
I guess what I want to say is it feels good to articulate the magnitude of this blessing. Being in the transition and persisting through it. Being in the city and loving the city, as we have ALWAYS felt was our calling. May we continue to live a little humble life but I also can't wait to have a bigger kitchen.
We are in the process of buying a house virtually twice the size of this one. This means that we will no longer have the quaint little life; bath toys and hair dryers in the same bathroom, the avalanche of winter coats in the 9 inch deep closets, our chubby kitty with no room to really exert her inner cheetah. My sis and her hub recently just moved from an apartment to a house and she says that she misses him when he's on the third floor. I would tease her about this except that when Geoff was walking this contractor through the new house, I was on the third floor changing Clara and could not make out any of the conversation.
The new house, the old house. We're calling Duval St. our "old" house even though we've only lived here for 2yrs and 1mo. So begins the life between the old and the new. As we pack, I am reminded of a friend who loved to pack for trips and described it like "wrapping presents for yourself when you get there." It probably says a lot about you, your style of "leave-taking," as Li Young Lee the poet calls it. My style of leave-taking is that I have no style. I'm watching Ms. Hoke, our neighbor, prepare to leave her home of sixty years. She suffers from emphysema, the price, I guess of being an elegant Germantown woman of the forties. She is in her eighties now. I bring her dinner twice a week and she gives me the Times after she reads it. She exudes dignity in her leave-taking. She asked the mailman to bring her 20 change of address forms. The last time she moved, your change of address form was the same thing you sent to your friends to say that you were moving. She steadily has collected her boxes and she's held on to the business sections of the Times so she can wrap her trinkets. I want to possess that same diligence. I am probably going to just throw the bookshelves in the van, books still in there. We're only moving 500 yards away. Yes, in the mix of moving clothes, there will be loads of dirty laundry. My mantra: take care of people first, things last. So, a trip to The Franklin Institute for three stir-crazy children will have to trump energetic rounds of precision packing. Nursing a teeny girl will have to come before feverish labelling sprees. Building lego rockets has to come before culling the business cards.
I have this confidence that we will get packed. Manny and Benici have tied up bundles of their books and Manny was rigging up a contraption by which he can attach the bundles onto his scooter. Benicio has dubbed the closet in their new bedroom at the new house, "The Boys Club." Little Clara Margot will probably not remember this house at all. Like Benici, she'll probably take her first steps just after we move. Benici's first steps were at Geoff's Grandparents' house in Brookhaven. I wept because they were not in OUR house and because neither of those granparents were in that house ot witness them. This house is special for her because she was born HERE. But the new house will be special for her because we believe that it is our "stead" as Geoff calls it. It will be what 1610 was for me, the ancestral home, the rooms and layout that still are in my dreams. The hope is to have many great firsts at the new house. So far the new house has been our first rehab project, our first independent financial endeavor of this magnitude, our first collaborative design project of this magnitude. It has been a real first for us in terms of first stress-induced insomnia and frankly, I think this process has grown us up tremendously.
We live by the verse, "To whom much is given, much is also required." We see this house as God's lavish gift to us and as our friends around us are teaching us, we want to extend as much as possible the hand of hospitality. So if we served our community adequately with 1200 sq. ft, with 2200sq. ft. we want to swing for the fence when it comes to loving folks. We could each have our own bedroom if we wanted!
I guess what I want to say is it feels good to articulate the magnitude of this blessing. Being in the transition and persisting through it. Being in the city and loving the city, as we have ALWAYS felt was our calling. May we continue to live a little humble life but I also can't wait to have a bigger kitchen.
posted by Maria at
9:32 PM
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