Almost fourteen years ago now, the house was placed in the yard (September 1999). I planted trees in front and on the sides the following Spring. Flower beds in front the year after that, if I remember correctly. And gradually the yard and the home took shape. A few years into the process, I started recording the changes here, in the A Garden View page under the About tab.
Now, the house is being removed. Where there was a home, there is now only memory.
Memory, and hope. Monday morning, bright and sunny, the house still stood, but not for long.
And in the middle of the day… the roof gone, the interior exposed, the bulk of our lives in tatters.
And toward the end, the excavator in what was Matthew’s room. The remains of our lives together were piled high in dump trucks.
In a few weeks, with luck, we will have begun the process of rebuilding for real. We will have approval from the county, and from the bank, for a home that has more than enough space. We will have space to gather, to linger, to grow old.
I have a garden still, and that will have to do for now. Do the children understand how important it is that we have space for them? Do they understand how hard it has been, to work for so long, only to start again?
They are about to begin their own lives, and in the beginning when everything is incremental and one is responsible only for oneself, it feels much simpler. The idea that beginning now means we will be well past middle age when all this is resolved seems horrible to them.
It’s not easy, but it’s possible. We have lived through difficult times, and even now, thinking about a new thirty year mortgage it’s daunting. But we have made it this far.
The anchor of “home” will give us what we need to go a little farther.
