HOME SWEET HOME – The Announcement

We planted the roses, the tulip bulbs, and the peonies from our neighbor’s starts. We laid the brick walkway, the wood floors and baseboards, and the awning over our piano room window where beautiful music was born. Every curtain I stitched. Every wall we painted, and painted again – tirelessly touched up every 4 months, especially the pantry door thanks to happy hungry fingers and many-a-dogs’ pawing. We lived in it. Dreamed in it. Brought shiny new babies home to love in it. Thought maybe we’d stay for EVER.

Last month, not without evidence of both providence and answered prayers, my husband accepted a new job. Far away. Far, far away, from our little home. He told me, just moments before I went on stage one night that he received a call. He got the job. We were moving, and he had to be there in 2 weeks. Without doubt or hesitation we were thrust into the reality of what that meant, for us, for the kids, for everyone we knew and loved in the neighborhood and state. This was it. We would be leaving our Home Sweet Home.

A wise sister of mine, after her bustling family of 5 survived a complete loss of their house to a fire, once told me as she woke up the next morning, having spent the night facing the devastation of years of personal things going down in flames, that she DID have her home. With her husband and kids all around her she felt comfort and peace knowing home was family.

It’s proving to be an exhaustingly wonderful adventure. We are in TOTAL transition. There are so many hiccups and bumps. I’m climbing straight up steep mudslides while trying to carry the parenting load single-handedly until the kids and I can move out there. I’ve traded weekly Zumba classes and comfortable work & family schedules in for taxi-ing my kids to and from school all day now that we’ve moved out of our old home until it’s sold. Sanity has certainly taken on a whole new shape, definition. I’m exercising Born Brave muscles that have rarely been flexed. And yet, every day and night I am completely immersed in family, with all our memories and lives gratefully intact. Yes, our home is so much more than walls or labeled cardboard boxes that sit in storage. I’ve got the love of my family and that, my friends, is home to me.

Now, if I could just get some more sleep…

Tags: home sweet home, katherine nelson