Wednesday, May 29, 2013

4 Year Anniversary...with my house

This seems about right. 

"The roses are blooming and I smell the sweetness.
Everything desirable is here already in abundance."

Feeling sentimental on the fourth anniversary of owning my house I googled "poems about home." That seemed to bring up only other sentimental nonsense, so I decided to just visit my old standby, the daily Writer's Almanac poem. As usual, it seemed to speak to things I was feeling - not entirely, but enough.

I've thought about the making of a home, the lives within a house, the transformation of a home space: the life of a house, for nearly every day since I became an owner of a house. It's an unusual adventure, "owning" a place (& space). What does it mean to own a material object that has held other lives and stories? This old house has sat in this very spot, though the world around it has changed tremendously, for 104 years. I am 29 years old, which is a sneeze in the life of this house.

It always feels like a huge responsibility. Some days it feels like a burden. When I see people eating grapes off my fence or stopping to admire my garden, it feels like a gift. I often find myself saying hello to the house, or looking back upon it while I wait for the bus at the stop right in front, or driving towards it from a different street so I can catch it at a different time of day/in a different light. It feels like a friend on those days; a friend I am still figuring out. 

After a weekend of transforming the garden - and planting over a hundred perennials divided from my mother's garden & childhood home 8.5 hours south of here - I am reminded how much it feels like an extension of myself.


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