The air is perfect. Too warm for October, but not steamy-hot like yesterday. A cool, comfortable breeze.
Refreshing. Like the few sips of ice water I enjoyed before the big dog knocked over the glass. Like slipping tired feet out of heels after a long day and into spongy, flat rubber flip-flops. Even better, the cool earth against my arches, lush green grass under my toes.
Refreshing as returning home after a week away and a long drive through the thick traffic and the drizzly dark. The beagle sat at attention to deliver the first greeting. Then the big, lanky brown dog loped over to rub his broad forehead against my thigh. Hey, you.
In the living room, my dear husband awoke in his easy chair, where he had been dozing and “watching” playoff baseball through his fluttering eyelids.
A few days later, even though the visit to a former life far away was wonderful, I’m still savoring the best part of leaving — coming home. From the cherry red, Adirondack chair in the backyard, feeling the perfect air against my skin, greeting the neighbors, tossing the ball for the dogs, breathing in the sweetness of fresh-cut grass from the church cemetary beyond our invisible property line.
This chair came with the house and property, which came with the love of my life and our family. My husband and stepsons have lived here for more than a decade. Uprooting the boys was out of the question.
So I moved. I’ve bloomed where planted before.
At first, I thought we’d live here until the boys were done with school.
Then, when I noticed my husband’s family name on generations of headstones in the cemetary and on old yellowed maps of our town I’d find while browsing the antique shops, it became clear that it would be wrong to ever uproot him from this place. He is of this valley.
I am home. This simple tan, square and sturdy 1860s house shelters our family. Every morning, there is something beautiful to see just a short walk out the door. In that way, it’s just like the best part of the old life.
We’ll most likely live here until I’m “planted” out back — ideally not taking up too much space and far below something much lovelier than grass that doesn’t need to be chopped every few days in a wet summer. Lawnmowers make me cringe. Not that it will matter.
The Man Cave look has yielded here and there. We have a blue room on the second floor with quilted wall-hangings and taupe curtains that is my studio. In the kitchen and white café curtains with flowered edges replaced the tired fabric hanging on closet dowels. Flower gardens curve along one side of our house — all surrounding the lawn where our grown boys still play whiffle ball. On one or two random, magical summer nights, everything but time stops for a whiffle ball game.
Behind home plate is the immense woodpile my husband, a teacher, builds over the first few weeks after school lets out for the summer. Red blossoms, red metal and red wood pull my eye through our gardens until it comes to rest on the big Adirondack chair beside the wood pile.
The first summer I lived here, I would sit in this red chair with my coffee and imagine all the future gardens. We’ve made many of them. There are a few more to come. More gardens dance in my mind’s eye. Always.
One summer Sunday morning, during my coffee time in the chair, I decided I’d go next door to the church service at 11. It seemed like time. You could say the spirit moved me. My husband never pressured me. My neighbor invited me, and said she thought I’d appreciate the wonderful community. She was right.
I’ve only heard love, acceptance, kindness and wisdom from our pulpit — and so I keep going.
The next summer, the pastor married us in front of an old stone house at the state park five minutes away — a place where we have walked so many miles and held so many family picnics that it feels like an extension of our home.
I cherish our healthy marriage, because I’ve had a bad one. I cherish this peace and contentment because I’ve been through the fire. My flames are no hotter than anyone else’s. Who knows when life will shatter a peaceful time — grab it while you can.
One project at at a time, the walls of our home will yield to open space and windows so we can see out back past the gardens and whiffle-ball field, the woodpile, the carved stone markers and the cornfield to the mountain where the trees reveal the season. In spring, bright green climbs up the ridges. In autumn, they are speckled with orange and rust. Jagged lines of blue-green conifers among the bright white snow in winter. Threads of dusky violet.
The dogs are played out now and lounge in the grass. Dusk has settled. The last pink of the sky fades to gray. The crickets are warmed up and hitting their stride.
Time to head inside for supper.