Our Second Home

It was never ours to keep. It was never mine to design. And, especially throughout the last few months, privacy was always elusive.

But it was our sacred duty to live in it.

Two years ago, with a baby in our arms, we entered the doors of our second home. And ever since then, this place bore witness to the best of times and the worst of it.

The triumphs: my husband perfecting his steak, baking and cooking with a toddler, little gatherings and celebrations, writing out my thoughts, redecorating it to our liking, finding friends in neighbors.

The tragedies: fights, tears, the silent treatment, bad days, bad moods, crazy tantrums, sleepless nights, the pandemic.

The ordinary: smoothies and scrambled eggs for breakfast, books and books and books, visits from friends (both little and grown), mornings in the ‘sun room’, chasing each other in the little hallway, mealtimes around the table.

The extraordinary: my daughter’s birth… and just raising a family, taking care of a marriage.

I’ve always thought you needed only one home to be considered stable. But after two (and one in-between), there has been so much adventure in having one home for a moment in time… and then moving on to another. It makes each one quite special, so sacred.

In this little space, so many feet have padded the wooden floors of our home. To those who visited us on a regular, you know who you are, thank you.

My children have grown to embrace what happens inside that when I ask them if they want to venture out, the little boy says, ‘Can we play first here, Mama?’

It is here where we established our family rhythm, where we looked out to the river as the sun hides and mused in our dreams and thoughts, where we planted our roots not in a place but in our souls.

These were the bones to our early family life – it was modest in size, just a few rooms down the hall. But it held the story of us for almost three years. And that’s home, isn’t it?