We’re in. We’re in and we’re up. We’re in, we’re up, and we’re ready to resume our life as we recently knew it. We have upgraded to a 2.0 kind of life. Everything is a bit easier, there is more space, and there is always one room after the next. We are spread out and loving it. We are just coming back to normal after not having internet for what seemed like a very short lifetime … like the life span of caterpillar, but we felt it uniquely. We blossomed and grew wings. We now have the life we’ve been planning for all year. This evening saw us realize one tiny dream that we’d often speak of between us with glowing eyes. We rushed home from work and immediately settled ourselves on the upper porch. He in his man rocker and me in my girl rocker. He with his iPod and me with my book (Turgenev’s First Love). He with his cold beer and me with my glass of red wine. He and I together facing the sun and watching her set over the other exactly-the-same-looking-houses-but-with-different-colors; both of us feeling a great big calm and a sparkly sense of sweet satisfaction. We did it. We found comfort. 
The cats were not happy at first. Not at all. They hated us. They hid behind the upstairs toilet in what must have been their secret fort. They growled and looked like old people as they glared hard at us with hate and all her armies venomously itching in their eyes. I imagine that we’ll have children one day that will hate us as much, maybe more. They did not like being uprooted from their familiar little lives in their familiar little apartment. They fought us greatly and hid from us like tiny feline Houdinis. We were constantly worrying our first day and a half. Little Bonita buried herself in blankets at all times. We hunted for her everywhere
and would find her rolled up in a little ball in the middle of blankets that we’d piled in the guest room from the night before where we’d slept on an air mattress. She sits here now beside me, quite calm and alive with her eyes staring outside the library door onto the upper porch. She is an adventurer now. She explores. She is no longer bundled in blankets and hiding from the world. I imagine she is wearing a hat like Indiana Jones with her tail her trusty whip.Our first night in the house saw the in-laws bombard us with their loving presence. My in-laws give me the quintessential in-law experience. They give me everything and more. I love that they ascended upon us our first evening
with themselves and the middle brother and his girlfriend. I didn’t have to cook, but I did. Here we were, six family members settled all cozily in the middle of our mess. Laughter and family light radiating through the new home, filling it with what will be always. We gave her a good taste of what’s to come. I sautéed vegetables and warmed the rotisserie chickens my in-law’s had brought. While it was hectic cooking in a kitchen that was all pulled apart and missing most of its guts, I’d much rather have this kind of dinner than a dinner of ordering pizza where I do not get to wear an apron. It’s rather phony to wear an apron when you’ve simply ordered pizza. My first evening, I earned that apron. I owned it.
And Mr. Husband was the Hero of the hour every hour and every day. He solved many a puzzle and fought many a valiant battle. He figured out how to hook up the washer and dryer with the help of a neighbor. He went to Home Depot and bought hardware supplies. He sat on the laundry room floor and cut coils and shaped shiny silver stuff into the cosmos that give a laundry room its necessary working matter. He cut up a mountain of boxes and never complained when more boxes came to life and worked their way
his way. He cleaned out the garage completely, allowing us to house both cars in the garage. That, some may say, is an incredible feat in its own right. We have BOTH cars in the garage with room to spare. He put dishes away and found clever little spots for all sorts of odd things. And in the end, he hooked up the computers so that we can both have piece of mind and share with other pieces of mind. So that we can both close the day on the upper porch—his thoughts folding and melting into mine as we find comfort in closeness in the calm of the night. He in his rocker and me in mine.
No comments:
Post a Comment