House Sweet House

My new home is not only sweet; it’s perfect. I don’t know how miracles like this ever happen. We bought our first real house and I’ve never felt this right about anything – well, maybe not since the day I married Chad – or since the moments each of my three sons emerged from the womb.

Owning this house is an indescribable, very surreal kind of blessing -- the way my marriage is, and the way my children are. And like my family, my house feels meant to be. It’s a familiar feeling, this butterfly-ish sort of excitement fluttering all around my being! Familiar because I wake and gaze dreamily out its windows, and sigh with satisfaction at the live portrait of green hills and blue sky – much the way I used to gaze into the specks of light in my newborn baby boys’ eyes while they nursed. Familiar because I shop now for doormats in the same blissful state I recall shopping for one-sies. And I awake each morning with the enamored remembrance that I am in my new house, the way I recall waking up for the first time to find Chad’s body lying next to mine, in the very same bed. And for the last six mornings, I have tiptoed out to my kitchen to peer in on my cherry red oven, in the same way I used to tiptoe down the hallway to the nursery to peer in on my new, sleeping, judiciously bundled baby boys. I pass through the hallways of my new house, brushing my bare feet against the hardwood floors, and sigh again and again – with satisfaction, with gratitude, with joy. I am positively infatuated with my new home.

Outside, in the yard, I can hear at least four different birdcalls. I feel like Snow White in the forest scene – like they’re all singing sweetly to Shanny. I feel like I happened on this home with the same luck or grace that Snow White stumbled upon the cottage of the seven dwarves. Fuzzy black caterpillars cling to the geraniums; lilies with stems sixteen inches long sway and lean in toward me, like they’d like a peek at what I’ve written. The fuchsia flowers climbing the rock wall on the side yard do a bit of a jig in the wind. And even the sour grass, decorating the ground next to them, seems perfect; I marvel at its happy fluorescent yellow. Even the weeds here are beautiful, resembling strands of wheat, only in a dim shade of green. And finally, if you ever read my charter post, (and if you didn’t you can right now – simply dig into the archives) you might be delighted to know that the house even came with a writer’s shack! It’s for real, friends. The shack will need some paint, and a skylight or two, but it’s a four-walled writer’s shack for damn sure. It’s a nearly mystical feeling, this house. A feeling of belonging. A feeling of having landed in exactly the right spot. A feeling of fate. Like the prince just rode into the forest on his stallion.

When we spent the long, grueling hours shopping for houses in our hometown, Castro Valley, (also oddly perfect for us) I never thought we’d find anything this ideal. In fact, I didn’t know what we’d find. I didn’t know what to even imagine when I was lying in the old house, between the sheets at night. I knew I wanted orange and avocado green on my walls; some delicate shades of blue. And I knew the sounds I wanted to hear between the lively, painted walls: lots of outrageous laugher, perhaps some tender weeping, and definitely lots of revelatory discussions late into candle-lit nights. I knew, too, the window scenes I wanted: all kinds of couch bouncing and break dancing, long and lingering kisses, or short silly ones, wrestling, tickle-fighting, and cookie-dough eating. I knew I wanted the smells of a fire in the fireplace, garlic and ginger in kitchen; the scent of lavender and jasmine riding the breeze right into our windows. But for the life of me, I didn’t know how to imagine the structure of my dream house. And now, here I sit, beneath the most wonderful lime green umbrella of a tree, a tree I don’t even know the name of, in the yard of a house so lovely and so right, that even with all of my named longings, I could never have dreamed it up.

When I say my house is perfect, I don’t mean you would find it on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous (does that show even air anymore – or am I that old?) or that you’d even see a snapshot of it in Better Homes and Gardens. I mean that this house is exactly what we want it to be and more. I mean that it speaks to us, deep in our souls, where the good decisions of life are made. I mean we couldn’t ask for anything more.

I suppose my feelings of infatuation for the new house could be likened to the infatuation of first being in love or having a new baby – that the flaws and challenges of my new house will reveal themselves eventually. But for now I bask in the glow of its perfection. For now, I remain infatuated; and why not? Because for ten years, it’s where I’ve secretly longed to be: in the house that now holds me.