The House We Left Behind: a Photo Essay

When we chose our first home, a 900-odd-square-foot bungalow, it was after viewing dozens of dwellings in our neighborhood known for its small historic craftsman and mission-style houses.  It was the flow of our house and its expansive yard that distinguished it from the others we viewed. 

I always knew it was the backyard that would deter us from moving (but also from expanding our house), and the yard that we would miss most. 

So I wasn't surprised, on one of our last afternoons in our bungalow, to find Big Sis weeping in our fairy-enchanted garden.

I'm going to miss the birds, she cried.  We won't have this backyard at the new house, and Amani can't roll around in the grass...

I hugged her.  Let's take pictures, I suggested.  Show me what you want to remember. 

There's the ornamental pear tree that was blighted when we bought the house.  We were advised to remove it, but we carefully and gradually trimmed it instead.  Ten years later, it finally bloomed white in season, like all its pear-tree friends down the block.  We hung swings and fairy houses from it, and nasturtium beds blossomed in its shade.

There's the garden Husband carefully tended, and the artichokes we harvested each summer and the compost bin that prompted volunteer pepper and tomato plants.  The raised bed is an upcycled wood frame from the fluorescent light box that dominated our small kitchen's ceiling. 

There's Big Sis's blackberries.  Not a prolific vine, but it blossomed and berried each year, and it's one of the plants she was saddest to leave behind. 

There's Husband's cactus and succulent section of the garden, where many of the plantings were cuttings from our dear friend Eric's amazing property. 

There's our prolific lemon tree, which grew too many lemons for us to use, and even for the girls to make into lemonade at the spur of the moment.  We'd pick them and line them up on the low wall between our and our neighbors' yard, where they could be plucked by our friends for their use.  Many a fairy concoction featured a lemon-juice base. 

 

 

There's the min-rose climbing vines we planted and let grow wild.  They were at their blooming best as we packed.  

When we built a fence along our new side patio seven years ago, we strategically planted two jasmine plants along it.  I loved waking and coming home to its warm perfume in early spring, and when we flung open the french doors the scent would permeate the house.  I vowed to plant some at our new home...

One of the joys of teaching children about plants and gardening is identifying edible varieties all around.  We had some naturally sprouting nasturtium in the yard when we bought our home, and we spread the seeds around the various beds over the years.  The girls were fond of grabbing flowers to munch on whenever they wandered outside. 

Our yard also had snowbushes, heavenly bamboo, agapanthus, bromeliad, a dwarf pomegranate, giant birds of paradise, silver-leafed Dusty Miller, sage, lavender, Mexican heather, and geraniums. 

As Big Sis directed my photography and Little Sis conducted a video tour of our garden, Amani the dog dug her last hole:

But we're growing accustomed to our new home and its flora.  There is abundant nasturtium in the canyon, bougainvillea we don't have to trim lining the canyon and our property, hydrangea about to burst, and jacarandas flanking the deck.  Our friend Eric, whose fig tree and succulents we willed to the new owner of our old home, came by my office with a surprise:  a blackberry bush harvested from cuttings on his own property. 

And the fairies are on call already (making me sigh with relief that we're in the process moving in mentally, now...):

 

Couched in Innuendo

One of the awesome parts of our new house is the family room downstairs that opens onto the deck, a large open space with great windows and afternoon light.  I'd dreamed of having a house with a separate living area for the TV and kid movie time--you know, a place for the family to hang out when I'm hosting book club in the living room.  But I'd also dreamed of having a third bedroom and more than one bathroom.  I didn't think we'd wind up with a family room and everything else this house comes with too, so I'm pinching myself.  We moved in five days ago, and it's still exciting to come home from work everyday. 

A bigger house means we could use more furniture, but I'm resisting filling the place in the manner of our former home (you recognize you may be on furnishings overload when you can't find a space to do a wall-sit and your house resembles a thrift store showroom).  Nevertheless, our new family room demanded a couch, and a stain-resistant sectional seemed like the perfect choice.  A new sofa was a budget priority, so I researched seating options while we waited to move in. 

I explained to my skeptical mother that I was looking for a new couch online.  It had to be within certain width specifications to fit the space, I elaborated, and I felt confident I didn't need to sit on it to find the right one. 

"We are looking for a sectional with a chaise." 

"A sexual?"  my mom answered.

"I think that option is more expensive," I laughed.  "A sectional, Mom.  A sectional."  And then I wasted no time transcribing our conversation into a text to my siblings. 

I continued searching for the perfect couch online.  I wanted a spill-proof sofa that cost less than a compact car.  High-quality leather sectionals were ruled out. 

I consulted my father.

"Dad, have you heard of bonded leather?"

"Bondage leather?"

"Bonded leather, goodness."

Folks, allow me to introduce you to our Sexual Couch with Bondage Leather.  It did not come with chaps or a bullwhip, but we think it's pretty perfect (and G-rated, thus far):

Wrestling with Worries

Right before bed, Big Sis summoned me for a private conference.  "I've been worrying," she shared.  We hopped onto my bed together, as is our custom when she needs to talk. 

"I'm worried about bombs and poison gases, Mom.  I mean, what if something like what happened in Boston happens here?  How do you know it won't?  We're learning about the chemicals in water and I'm thinking about how our water could be poisoned, and I can't get it all out of my mind..."  Her anxieties issued from her in a gush. 

I don't know it won't happen here, sweetheart.  I can't promise you it won't.  But I can reassure you that kindnesses in our world are more likely than terrible things.  And while we live every day with the knowledge that accidents happen and sicknesses happen and pain is part of our experience, births also happen, and celebrations, and beauty and wonderfulness are all around us. 

A few more trips from her bedroom for reassurance followed, until we finally sent her back to bed with an assignment to think of a baby girl's name for each letter of the alphabet. 

We're all worried these days, aren't we, though we each feel it and wear it and express it in different ways?  Our daughter, prone to apprehensions and anxious wonderings, was bound to come to us with Boston-inspired concerns and questions.  She devoured a copy of The Hunger Games over spring break, a book I'd hoped she would wait to read, with its poisonous berries and...everything else.  Being displaced right now, between old house and new and on an extended vacation at Mammom's and Bampa's house, provides another source of instability.

I watch my own reactions to news and personal circumstances closely.  Pregnancy--even simply embarking on the journey of parenthood by attempting to conceive or adopt--means stepping onto a landscape of uncertainty and unknowns, new frontiers of hope and worry.  I mark the hurdles:  heartbeat on ultrasound, first trimester completed, negative screening results.  But there's no point of earned complacency in parenthood and life, only comfort in acknowledging the risks and joys associated with vulnerability. 

Disasters and tragedies aren't required to provoke our anxieties--all we need is a convenient temporal basket for our worries.  Moving, and a new house, have been ripe fodder for my over-active imagination at 3:00 AM.  I pictured the deck on our house as higher than it really is, the hillside steeper, with guests tumbling into the canyon in the event of a collapse.  Upstairs windows might be easy for children to fall from.  The canyon could be a nesting ground for rattlesnakes.  Would our house be easy to burglarize?

And then I remembered this week we'd momentarily forgotten to be afraid of North Korea.

So much randomness and unpredictability inspires the desire for us to exert controls on identifiable and accessible areas in our daily lives.  I could put locks on the windows, install an alarm system, forbid the kids from exploring the canyon.  But the worries would only reinvent themselves, seep through cracks in the door frames like poison gases.  There aren't enough sandbags to guard against uncertainty.  And somewhere along the bucket brigade we stop living how we truly want to, with chin up and eyes on the birds twittering on the fence, on the sunset, on the horizon.

So we hold hands, snuggle on the bed, reassure, and resolve.

We're working on managing our fears and anxieties over here.  How about you?  How have worries surfaced?  How do you balance caution with embracing wonder and vulnerability?

P.S.  a shout-out to Jewel, whose song "Hands" made it into the iPod shuffle on my jog this morning, with timely lyrics:

"If I could tell the world just one thing

It would be that we're all OK

And not to worry 'cause worry is wasteful

And useless in times like these

I won't be made useless

I won't be idle with despair..."

33rd Street: June 2001-April 2013

We left our little bungalow behind last weekend, moving the last remaining items out as our excited buyer began spackling, painting, and making plans for her new abode. 

This was the first house we ever bought, the one whose mortgage we were promised we'd "grow into," as we dumped our change jars and counted every penny.  It's the house with dear neighbors, our amazing Apello pine tree, the yard where fairies fluorished, and rooms which welcomed us, newly married, and our babies. 

We're between houses until wood floors are installed in The New House and kitchen cupboards are painted.  Meanwhile, we've established temporary residence at my parents' house. 

The new house is still The New House.  Soon it will feel like Our Home--but not yet.  Now empty and echo-y, it waits for us to fill spaces and establish new routines, acquaint ourselves with neighbors, and create comfort. 

The girls said their own goodbyes to our beloved home and gardens; their tributes will be featured in a longer, forthcoming post. 

Farewell, sweet habitat. 

Plenty of Poetry

I've been *enjoying* 3:00 AM insomnia for the past few months.  Sure, call it my body's way of preparing for a baby who is likely not as predictable as whatever internal alarm clock nudges me from slumber at an eerily consistent hour I can't even celebrate as close to early-morning workout time. 

I generally get up between 5:30 and 6:00, so it's sobering to think of how many hours I have after 3:00 each morning to accomplish something, and how little I actually do, as I snuggle my iPad and scroll through blogs and read articles and play a few rounds of Words with Friends (lather, rinse, repeat...).

Today, though, I used the United States Postal Service website to forward our mail to our new house and signed up for a poem a day via email on the Poetry Foundation's website.  I was so grateful to myself when Marianne Boruch's "Pencil" arrived in my inbox later this morning; I had to share it with an art teacher colleague. 

In the afternoon I spotted another teacher/friend scurrying away from the office who called out, "I just left you a poem!" 

Seriously?  Yes. 

There was a photocopy of Billy Collins' "The Effort" waiting for me on my keyboard. 

Today felt like a wonderful profusion of poetry, especially since I unearthed a poem I wrote when I was pregnant with Big Sis to publish here today:

Flutter

Something new is overtaking me
The wonder of you inside
My body a housing,
encasing hope, fantasy,
and infinite possibilities:
The unwitting agent
of change in the world, a new prophet
for the world's devout, I carry you
gently,
little moth. 

Easter Egg Cake Pops, Executed

We rallied and pulled off our Easter Egg Cake Pops.  Our project was saved from jettisoning by a lucky find in a Costco "Cake Pop" making set, which included colored candy coating discs, cake pop sticks, sprinkles, and a styrofoam platform for propping the pops.  We ditched the cake mix part of the set, because our recipe requires only a package of Oreo cookies and a package of cream cheese, food-processed, chilled, and shaped into eggs by little hands (no baking!).  We dipped them in the melted candy discs, sprinkled them--and then used the remnants of each melted candy color to make frosting swirls on some of the pops.  We nestled the "duds" that fell off their sticks into the paper grass. 

Voila!

Easter Ideas to Execute or Just...Consider

Last weekend the girls and I were feeling crafty, and the Easter box from the garage provided some inspiration.  We created a simple papier mache/decoupage egg project out of three materials:  plastic eggs, cut/torn tissue paper, and gluey water. 

All the eggs are waiting for now is a little Modge Podge shellacking, or some glitter glue stripes or ribbon, stickers, or...?  Note:  littler fingers can get frustrated with the gooey tissue paper...but I, who had many more important tasks to accomplish, found decorating these eggs (and "fixing" Little Sis's attempts) to be conveniently soothing and distracting.

We're going to a party on Saturday, and I'm tempted to make these cake pops (find recipe here):

We could shape them into eggy ovals and cover them with white chocolate and decorate...they don't require baking, and don't have eggs...perfect for our friend with allergies.   

But there's a very real possibility that the Easter Bunny will never get around to Modge Podge-ing the eggs above (I believe the Podge is packed in the storage container), and has enough to do figuring out how she's going to fill some baskets (and hide some eggs QUIETLY) on Sunday. 

What about you?  Any dyeing or decorating or basket-filling buds of inspiration?