Love grows best in little houses, with fewer walls to separate.
Anon
Where you eat & sleep so close together, you can’t help but communicate.
And if we had more room between us, think of all we’d miss.
Love grows best in little houses just like this.
(I just found this post, years later, stuck in my drafts. It made me feel things, so I’m sharing it with you now…)
Seventeen mailboxes into my life, I put my roots in people, not places. But we just sold you, little house on Applecross Lane, and I’m teeter tottering on the edge of my feelings. You, sweet 3/2, you have been a circus ring, a school, a church, an office, a concert hall, a house of healing.
If your walls could talk, they’d be fluent in Hamilton, Wicked, Poison, old country, new country, talking back, talking up and more than a few talking to’s. 80s favorites, the Titanic sound track (#notsorry), Rocky Top, Dad jokes, Come, Lord Jesus, Be Our Guest, Spades scores and shrieks of B.S. Your walls held us up, held us together. Your floors grounded us. Dancing—from waltzes to tik toks to our own custom choreography. Your paint absorbed rehearsals of tough conversations and too many eulogies reverberated in echoes of pain and peace.
This is where I started knocking on the boys’ doors as fair warning. I know the corner window where Case would watch for my car coming down the street when I came home from a work trip. The smack middle of the kitchen where I braced myself against the island for a political joust with Tucker, where I learned the best thing I could give him was space for us to trade mistakes. The rack in the laundry room where we hung the too-small jerseys that Jeff couldn’t part with. The just-right spot on the patio where I took my coffee with a cannonball of cream, my kisses in threes. The exact stone Jeff would stand on where he could keep an eye on the football score and his egg. Where Tucker walked less than two steps in the door and betrayed himself with a grin. He’d been smooching. First day of school pictures were snapped by the birds of paradise out front.
A doorframe holds the history of smudged lead lines where the boys overtook my height. From their bedrooms, these new, tall kids would emerge in the morning. And I never had a chance to say goodbye to the ones from the day before, the ones who loved white tshirts, “who here’s trying to start a riot”. The ones who reached for my hand in public.
I don’t remember the last time I tucked them in with a prayer, but I know it was here, in this house. They have grown as wild, as unconfined, as the confetti lantana out front—a resting space for monarchs mid migration, bees as long and thick as my (un-green) thumb, hummingbirds that slowed just a smidge, mesmerized by the red, yellow and pink blossoms cohabiting in a single cluster.
This is where the boys learned that hugs are my love language and spoiled me with squeezes. But we also learned that you can’t hug away all hurts. Doors slammed. Moods unhinged. Sweetness was eclipsed by first-class sass.
The carpet swallowed tears. The roof opened to give my screams a pathway to heaven. Fear is a reaction. Courage is a decision.
Simple as a crossstich, complex as the final piece. Where we surrendered to the busy because that kind of hard is easier.
Repose gray walls that, like our days, our prayers, our existence, are warm and cool and chameleon. The dang chameleon! I’ll never forget where I sat when Case shared his 21-page power point to convince us he needed one–why you have to gut load the live crickets before you feed them to the veiled chameleon–in a habitat warmed with the right lamp, spritzed with sterile water in a semi-circle twice a day.
A chameleon, a Frenchie puppy.
The backyard deer, the front yard bunnies.
Roots deep and strong.
I know the cracks, the loose pavers, the spot on the window sil that coaxes green leaves toward the sun, the window where you can watch the birds and the bats switch shifts, the time of night the owl calls my name.
I know where to knock on the wall to nudge Case out of bed. How many steps from the kitchen to Tucker’s room. I know where the reception is best and where—ooops—I will likely lose the call.
There are things we’ll take with us. Our little dining table with the swivel seats where we ask over dinner, most days, what made us laugh, what we learned and how we helped today. There are things that won’t change.
Every kitchen floor we call our own is made for dancing.
But I wish the new owners, your new family, every ounce of light and happiness you can hold.
Love grows best in little houses, just like this.
You always see the good, the light, the bright side. Maybe that’s what makes you such an ace photographer.
my ft.notes 