I am saying goodbye to this home. To this home that stored the memories of four years. Four of the sweetest years of my life.
I’m saying goodbye to this town of Blythewood-- this place I never would have chosen. Like most romantics like myself, I dream of rolling hills and large oaks and wild poppies on the side of the road. Instead God gave me this quirky town adorned with chain link fences, feed-and-seed stores, Bojangles and trailer homes. There's a restaurant we pass on our drive downtown marked only by a sign reading "EAT." I have come to love the people in this town. Connie who serves faithfully at Round Top Food Pantry, eagerly filling the back of her truck with our farm discards to give to the 200 families they feed weekly. Sunny Clark and his 50 year old Mule who still ploughs his fields. Sally and her collard transplants on the side of the road. Tony and the city food scraps he turned into compost gold. George who helped us construct a walk-in cooler until 10pm on Valentines day. Jason and the sourdough bread we traded for ground beef and pork chops. The Kemps. The strangely comforting sound of Devin’s led feet above our room. Hearing Carly practice her violin.
This is the place where I took care of my first home garden. The Kemps graciously allowed me to dig into a plot nestled under two tall pines where they used to grow their Fall pumpkins. This would be the little plot I would visit each morning to water with the hose– the plot where I harvested 80 pounds of sweet potatoes, where I planted 10 foot "mammoth" sunflowers, where orange cosmos went to seed and sprouted up in every nook and cranny. Where I learned how much you could grow in a small space and that bigger is not always better. Where I vowed to always be a child full of wonder– to never let the turning of a seed into a sprout become any less miraculous to me. This is where we learned to raise chickens and quail, where eggs comprised fifty percent of our diet and helped with our newlywed, shoestring-budget.
This is the pond where I caught my first fish one Summer evening. This is where we would harvest blueberries in the evenings after class and where the music of the “Prince Albert” the peacock would startle us awake at dawn. Where Shane would feed the sheep acorns when he got home from class. This is where we would bring home our share of the farm’s harvest and feast with a picnic in the pasture near Cody, the Clydesdale.
Flowers always in a large vase on the table, even if it’s only goldenrod from down the street. The thrifted bee painting above the sink. The mustard yellow curtains. Candles to make the cave-like interior warm and cozy. This is the kitchen where I fell in love with baking sourdough bread. The home where we discovered how to love Jesus by inviting others to our table to feast with us and where the act of opening our doors and setting a table for friends became the simplest expression of the gospel to us. Where our creaky pull-out couch was regularly unfolded for college friends who’d rather not spend another night in the dorms and who craved the warmth of a real home.
A fall harvest-meal, a flower-potluck with my Hobby Club, William's Paw Patrol birthday party, a baby shower for my expecting sister, members of book club all huddled around mugs of chamomile and Brave New World, a Seder meal where we celebrated the coming of the New Jerusalem! This is the place where God laid on our hearts the sweet, vivacious people from the island we would point to on the map hanging above the piano. This is the place we came home to after our wedding. A "Just Married!" banner hung by the youth group, groceries stocked in the fridge and enough toilet paper to last us our entire first year of marriage.
More recently, this is the home we brought our baby girl home to. The little den we painted green and the rocking chair nestled in the corner. Already countless hours spent rocking, nursing, laughing, crying. A place I know she'll never remember but for the stories we'll tell her. There’s a Bradford Pear just a few strides from our door that we’d go and sit under and wait for her dad to pull up the driveway after work. She’d look up from her blanket and watch curiously at the leaves dancing in the wind. I’m glad she started to shape her little world in a place as beautiful as this.
Since becoming a mother, change has been hard for me. I used to pride myself in my nomadic heart– never content to stay in one place for long, always eager for the next new thing. But this home, and being a mother, has changed me– has made me see the beauty of staying put, of letting my roots sink deep down into familiar soil, of seeing a place change from one season to the next and letting myself change with it.
I have wanted to hold on to it all...to slow down time. I have held things with a tight grip. I’d like to think that I will always live near my sisters. I’d like to imagine that I can hold on to the farm I nurtured and cared for, the two acres we imagined (and sweated) into being. I'd like to hold on to these newborn days and keep little Lilias cradled up close to me forever. And I'd like to hold on to these four walls– this little house we've made home.
I’m headed to another home now. A city just as peculiar to me, just as worthy of being loved and just as likely to surprise me as this one has. I’ve vowed to look at this cement jungle with fresh eyes and not think any less of it because there’s Disney in place of rolling hills and because it’s nearly December and I’m sitting by the pool in a tank top writing this. I’ll search for the beauty here, too. I’ll look for the people to love and invite to our table. Our pull-out couch will still be here for any weary souls who happen to pass our way. I’ll make a new home here.
So much of life is learning how to loosen our grip and embrace the new. It hurts but it's good. It is good to grieve the end of this season so long as it doesn’t keep me from tasting the goodness in this new one. I often think of my dear friend Gerard Manley Hopkins' who tells me to "sign it, seal it, send it away" to God, the giver, who keeps things "with fonder a care than we could have kept it." Nothing is really ever lost. This is the promise I cling to as I close this chapter and move forward into the next. All this undeserved beauty that I’ve witnessed here is safely kept; now is the time to walk forward with eager feet!
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