I'm sitting in our farmhouse kitchen at the bay window watching the Russian Olives outside sway in the hot, summer breeze. The same Russian Olives my husband wants to chop down. They are pesks, a weed, he says. If they aren't pruned and loved on they are a mess. I kind of love them. Their smell, the relaxed lilt of their branches. We've only actually lived here two weeks but I'll be sad to see them go. Yes, they will be replaced by trees that will fill their holes, already though, things that drew us here will have changed.
I've thought about going back, writing about our lives these past few months, documenting the remodel we have done thus far on the farmhouse. I just can't bring myself to do it. Too much has happened, too much time has passed. I shouldn't even be sitting here. I should be unpacking, organizing and cleaning. Life doesn't stop for anything. It's like, we unpacked the necessities to live so we could finally live together as a family and we kept barging forward. All of those boxes waiting to be opened, already collecting dust, time doesn't wait on them to be opened. They could be forgotten, those fragments of our life, and we'd find new things to replace them or find we never even needed them at all.
It was emotional for me to pack up our first home together. The home where we grew in our young love, where I saw the positive symbol for both my babies. We remodeled and molded it to reflect us and our life together. We went from having roommates to decorating nurseries. From boyfriend and girlfriend to husband and wife. Such stories those walls could tell. I've caught myself backpedaling in my mind. Wanting to go back, move back in and start where we left off before we moved. A lot has happened in a few months. Taxing on our lives, our marriage and our children. That house feels safe, secure, familiar. I almost long for it, an ache in my heart.
This farmhouse, we fell in love at first sight. It was everything we didn't even realize we wanted. The requirements we had listed off for our future home went out the door on this one. The things that needed fixed seemed so minor to the big picture. The farmhouse became this magical, dreamlike ideal and we couldn't believe it when it became ours. Like all things that you see when you're love drunk, the fixes began to seem overwhelming and never-ending when the buzz faded. I almost began to dread coming out here to work on it, to walk in to a home that was no longer familiar and warm. Days kept passing and we worked and worked and more days passed. It felt like life was moving on all around us but we were just drifting around waiting for something solid to step on to. Something that would hold us steady and sure. Some sort of sea change in our lives.
I feel like in the past few months we've lost something. Something not quite tangible but perhaps a sense of who we are as a family and as individuals. For us, it wasn't as simple as moving out of one house and into another. I know a house doesn't make a home, it's the people in it right? But moving into the farmhouse has left us struggling to find our presence. Going in and out of the daily grind of life doesn't fill a home and ours is feeling lifeless and empty. It will happen. Slowly, I know this. We will fill it up with a laughter and love, tears and shouts. Our presence will seep into the walls, the floors, out the doors and into the land around us. This farmhouse will feel safe and secure, warm and familiar and our family, we will grow and love it. In the meantime though, this thing buried deep in my chest, it needs to find a voice again.
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