Sunday mosaic # 3
Posted on | November 14, 2005 |
The last yellow leaves came down in the wind today and the light has taken on a winter hue. I walk about barefoot before breakfast, gathering up CDs and ripped magazine pages that have been scattered throughout the living room like confetti.
Later we drive again to look at the house we’re in a tizzy about. It’s rather awful really, built the year I was born and decorated in the poor taste and color pallet of the late 1970s. Barn board on the walls, linoleum, wallpaper, and crappy kitchen appliances. But the land is so beautiful I gasp, looking out a the view.
Set up on a hill looking out over the Green Mountains, it is twelve acres of woods and fields, a small stream, old apple trees. My mind imagines space for gardens, chickens, maybe a pony. We spend at least a half hour walking about the house taking pictures, trying to visualize what it could look like if we put down pumpkin pine floors, knocked down walls, and pulled off the awful rustic siding.
Outside, walking up on the hill above the house, the air smells sweet like drying leaves. Old stone walls scissor their way through the trees; remnants of a different time when the fields were tilled by hand and people worked at a slower pace.
Bean has almost grown accustomed to drifting off to sleep in the car and waking up in a new place, on a tour of other people’s homes. Today he plays with his echo in the empty rooms of the house, and copies the rhythm and pitch of our voices with his “uh-uh-uh-ings.”
Before we started the process of looking we should have written a list that said: here the things that matter to us. But we didn’t, so we get caught up in the moment, pulled about like body boarders in a rip tide. Standing on the terrace looking out towards the hazy blue lines of the mountains, all I want is this.
Later, after we make pasta and garlicky bread with friends for dinner, and then gorge ourselves on berry pie, ice cream and coffee, I sit at my desk nursing an overfull stomach and glum thoughts. I imagine the long weeks turning into longer months of renovations waiting for completion. I picture the dark sloped ceiling of the bathroom upstairs, and the strange, somewhat problematic two sided fireplace in the living room.
I picture us arguing the way we are now—over the little choices: the stove, the dishwasher, the colors for the walls, the very floorboards. I am not sure how much choosing we can take. The ability to make choices is the ultimate expression of human freedom. Yet it is the possibility of choice that invites guilt, fear, failure, risk. Taking one path, we leave the other unexplored. Committing to renovating here, means we cannot also build. My dreams for a decadent master bath put on hold again.
Ready for his bedtime bath, Bean crawls away top speed into the kitchen, giggling as I chase after him. Then I think: THIS is what matters.
I’m happy in a tent. Happy with just my sleeping bag and the dome of heaven above me, starry and black. I was happy as a child too, in all the strange houses I grew up in that were never renovated until the month or two before we moved. It is so easy to forget this: that in the moment right here, now, happiness means hearing my son laugh, or eating the sticky sweetness of warm pie. Being present in the moment allows for a certain flexibility, that imagining into the future stunts.
DH pulls up a chair beside my desk. He’s drawn floor plans. I can feel the warmth of his skin next to me as he explains the outlines he has drawn in pen. I like what he has drawn.
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15 Responses to “Sunday mosaic # 3”
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November 14th, 2005 @ 1:16 am
I love the way you write…does it come out of your brain that way or do you write it and rethink and write some more? The way you put words together inspires me for some reason…weird huh?! You make your life seem artistic and beautiful.
November 14th, 2005 @ 3:46 am
House renovations are never done. It’s the planning and dreaming and living that fill you up
November 14th, 2005 @ 4:53 am
beautiful words and images
November 14th, 2005 @ 4:53 am
ahhhhh arguing over the little things… I can so relate.
ps: we have decided not to buy the apartment. and there were no renovations to do at all. after much debating, we prefer buying a house that we love, in a better neighborhood, even if fixing it will take us years.
November 14th, 2005 @ 7:27 am
I imagine that if you were to design and build a house with DH it would be unbelieveably charming. I also, imagine, that if you were to renovate a house, it would be lovely and warm. Finally, I imagine that if you were to live in a house that wasn’t yet as glorious as you want it be, somehow, your family’s personality and joy would make it seem like a palace.
November 14th, 2005 @ 8:24 am
oh Christina— I have chills reading your words. You know every inch of the journey you are about to embark upon– you know every step and which ones will lead to which experiences. Having just gone through precisely what you are going through this moment (me= the last 3-4 years on top of the years before that when I lived in a jobsite as we renovated the home we were living in. Gah.) So many of your sentences I want to lift out whole and copy them here and say, SO TRUE.
I’m so glad to see you can let go of the angst (and there is surely some variety of angst every step of the way) and be in the moment of where you are– focus on all that you have– and allow the new to come into being. I will be reading along closely and YES– email me anytime NEIGHBOR!! (I’m in NH). Hugs.
November 14th, 2005 @ 8:50 am
difficult choices…but I enjoy reading about your thoughts.
November 14th, 2005 @ 9:09 am
I can’t wait to see what you all end up doing–I feel like I’ve somehow been on this adventure with you all, your words are so descriptive. Best of luck with your many decisions!
November 14th, 2005 @ 1:16 pm
we have been where you are…
we just bought our house in may
and have been living in renovation since.
i nearly cried when i first saw the house,
so stuck in the seventies it was…
but now,
i am glad that we bought it and that
we are doing it ourselves…
i have two children of my own
and run a home daycare
and we made it through ok
(so far)
heehee….
good luck and great blog
November 14th, 2005 @ 1:56 pm
I was out walking the trails yesterday with my friend and our dogs and we were remarking on how in our neighbourhood, you can either buy newer houses on itty bitty lots on main streets, or old houses on fantastic ravine lots or with massive backyards on quiet streets for the same price. We both live on the latter, there’s always work to do on these houses, and we’d never trade for the former. The perfect locale for your needs is priceless; houses can be modified or even torn down. Good luck.
November 14th, 2005 @ 3:52 pm
beautiful! beautiful imagery, beautiful musings, beautiful mosaic, beautiful lesson to be learned.
November 14th, 2005 @ 9:51 pm
I love your mosaics … one day will you teach me how to do that?
I love reading your dreamy posts. And yes, the here and now and the daily stuff is what is really important. As I type these words, my three children are in the next room having a tickling competition. With timers and scores and everything. That is the sort of thing that is important in life. Children’s laughter.
And cake.
November 14th, 2005 @ 10:16 pm
You are really very good at this … very good.
November 14th, 2005 @ 11:03 pm
I don’t know what to be more envious of - your dreamy, delicious writing, your pictures that make me say YES!!, or the fact that you and BP could be neighbors.
November 14th, 2005 @ 11:09 pm
loving these sunday mosaics. such a lovely peek, thank you. and enjoying your thoughts on being present.