Home. Home? Home.

Yesterday we helped our best friends move. They are moving from an adorable cottage in the high Foothills to an adorable cottage in the small downtown area. We came by to pick up their oven (yes, the stove saga continues) and stayed to help with box moving and for moral support. As the movers slowly cleared the house and basement of its contents we talked and had a beer and lugged tote boxes into waiting piles. The boys played quietly in the newly vacant rooms and corners and it made me realize we likely never be inside this home again. No more warm dinners in her red kitchen, I would never pee in the odd corner bathroom with its original wall radiator, no late nights on the patio, sipping wine and talking in the fresh almost mountain air.


In the past I have lived in an old tenement apartment in NY, a Victorian home that was once a brothel in Portland, an old adobe home built in the 20's.

They all had odd angles and old features and many previous residents. I slept in those homes, sheltered and warm, made meals for friends and spent days and days of my life calling them Home with a capital H. Yesterday was a reminder of the transience of Home, a realization that there is very likely other warm bodies eating and sleeping where I once did, living there right now today.

We have decided to spend the next 10 months tinkering with this home we now have. We will shed and tweak and paint and add new trim and molding and a deck and and and. We planned on doing all of these things before we thought we might move but it is nice to have a push. The often discussed wine cabinet is on its way, the paint colors picked.


I shudder a little when I think of the sheer amount of stuff our friends had to box and move yesterday and I know when we do move my frustration with the sheer amount of stuff we have will mirror hers. It made me resolve to try to do a monthly clean and purge so that down the line when the day does come, the pain of collecting and relocating might be just a bit less.

Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by the logistics of what we wish to do; sell, relocate, buy. It seems impossible; to leave this home, to find the right place and buy it before another, to make it work. Dreaming is scary.

I explained it like this to my Momma the other day :: There is nothing terribly wrong with where we live now; it has beautiful mountains and our home makes me happy and our wonderful friends live here. But we found where we, Tim and I, want to grow old. We found the place that speaks to Us and it happens to be hundreds of miles closer to my siblings and at the base of the most beautiful mountain lake in the world and a place where we can afford land. And that makes Dreaming good.


So for now it is just a step by step process. Baby steps to the painted walls, baby steps to the new front doors, baby steps. I will just have to have faith in that. And the friend that moved? Well, now I can visit her in her new cottage home miles closer to us and we can scheme together just how to make this move North work because they have decided they are coming with us.