Just Life

This is home. Right in the front, you can see the little angel, buried in the snow next to the purple plum tree that will bloom for Charlotte's birthday next May. It is a beautiful garden. It is a beautiful house. It is so very much a home. It is perched up on a rocky ledge, with ancient stone walls terracing it up above the road. The driveway winds up around to the back, bringing visitors into our little enclave up off the road. Tall pines and hemlocks surround our backyard, and the woods behind lead down to a beautiful, mossy, rock-filled river, surrounded by very old, big hemlock trees. Across the road, filling our house with the constant noise of rushing water, flows another river. They join a few houses down the road. This is my home, where I live, where my heart is. I sometimes smile to myself to realize that this is where my children's childhood memories will be rooted.

We take turns sleeping "in" on the weekends, today was my day, and I slept until 8:30. This was after going to bed at about 11, sleeping in Liam's little twin loft bed with him from 12-2, and having Liam in bed with us from 4:00 onwards. Aoife awoke to nurse at 6, and then Liam woke up at 7, and then my sleep-in started. What's all this about sleeping through the night? I swear some nights I do actually get to sleep from 10-6. I do. Just not last night. But I did sleep in.

When I came down, there were waffles brewing in the oven, real, yeasted, Belgian waffles. The iron was hot, there was whipped cream and syrup on the table (real, of course, we live in a sugaring town) and berry compote. How I love my domesticated husband who cooks amazing food for us. We ate this feast with coffee and orange juice, and then settled into a lazy Sunday morning (as if it hadn't been already). Aoife and I read books in the big chair by the fireplace, then Greg broke out the guitar and we had a family singalong. This is a weekend standard. We sing loud, and some family favories are "The Good Old Hockey Game" by Stompin' Tom and the song about Charley who couldn't get off of the MTA and some Greg Brown favorites. The kids dance and sometimes we break out other instruments (kid instruments) and Greg sings the melody and I sing the harmony and we have a good old time.


The sun was shining, so we headed down the road. It's a beautiful road, slow and it winds along a river. When you come onto our road you pass 2 horse farms, then a dairy, and then some cornfields with hemlock forest going up the side of Turkey Hill on your right, until you come to the little bridge that goes over the river, and just after this you can see the confluence of the big river across the street from us and the little one that runs behind our house. Then there is this little gathering of tiny little old houses in the little valley, about 4, and our house is perched up on the hill. I love our little pink house. I don't think I'll ever move, and part of this is because Charlotte lived here (albeit in my belly) and I would feel like I was leaving her behind.


So anyway we walked up the road, with Aoife in the carriage and Liam on his trike (manhandled from the back by me with a pushbar so he can't steer into traffic). We visited the calves and then headed home, into the lunch and nap routine.


Then in the afternoon we move out of the home, with alternate trips to the Y to work out for me and Greg, and then a trip to town with good friends to eat at the "french fry" restaurant (this differentiates it from the Chinese restaurant or the pizza restaurant, some of our other favorites).


We came home to "crazy time" when the kids run around naked upstairs for a while, and then baths, cozy warm towels, and cozy warm beds. Aoife didn't want to nurse tonight. "Just books," she tells me, running to the end of the hall and shouting, "Greg!" Daddy is the book-man these days at bedtime.


I colored with Liam downstairs before taking him up and tucking him in. "Tell me what it's going to be like next morning," he asks, and I tell him about the Nor'easter that is headed our way, and how school is likely to be cancelled.


I came down to Greg on the phone. His school has already been cancelled for tomorrow. So our weekend will be long, and tomorrow might just be more of the same, minus the trips in the car and with a little snow-removal thrown into the package. So tomorrow our day will be home again, together, a happy, little family in their cute, little pink house, bought for the nursery that sits in the tiny gable over the two lit windows in the picture, a nursery that stood empty for a year and a half with crib made up with crisp sheets, little clothes in the drawers, and soft, cotton diapers folded gently in the changing table. Who would have ever known such laughter would follow such silence and deep sadness?

I feel so fortunate in so many ways.