Housiversary

Eleven years ago today we closed on this house. At the time we'd been married eight years, and had lived in six places. This was our seventh. Seven homes in eight years.

Now we've been married nineteen years, and we've still only lived in seven places. Our home has come a long way with a lot of elbow grease, and I love it.

Where we would ultimately settle down had been a matter of very much pondering and thought for me and for Blaine. I had been raised in a suburb and was fond of big-city bustle. It seemed the most romantic idea in the world to me to live in an apartment on the sixteenth floor or something, to always have to go down an elevator and to the city park to let the kids play. Blaine's dad was in the air force so when he was very small they transferred around a lot, always living on bases. By the time he was eight years old they had settled in Utah and by the time he was about twelve years old they had moved out into the country, buying a cobbled-together foreclosure on three acres in what was then the middle of nowhere. So I was a city girl, he was a country boy.

It took us several married years to figure out what we wanted, and develop a unison of philosophy: we wanted land. We wanted trees for our children to climb. We wanted to raise them in a place where the pace was slower and the air was fresher. But we didn't know where that place was, and we rented and moved, moved and rented, bought a home and sold a home and never stayed anywhere much longer than a year because we were searching for something. Through multiple moves and in different houses or apartments, I kept a postcard on my fridge. The picture was lovely, a vineyard in Europe somewhere ablaze with sunrise. The quote printed on the front was from Judith Thurman's book The Hand of Distance: "Every dreamer knows that it is entirely possible to be homesick for a place you've never been to, perhaps more homesick than for familiar ground." I've never read the book, I have no idea who Judith Thurman is, but the quote on that postcard resonated with me so strongly it was like an anchor to my dreams, a lifeline for my hopes. Someday, someday I would find that place I felt homesick for, the place that would become my home and the place where I would raise my children. My place existed somewhere, and I couldn't wait to find it. I felt incomplete without it.

It was only within the last year that I realized that I have no idea where that postcard has gone—it's not on my fridge anymore—and that my yearning to find home has long since settled into serenity. This was the place I was homesick for, even though I had never been here. And now that it has become my familiar ground, I am content. I am at home. I am at peace.

So happy anniversary, home. I hope you and I will be together a long, long time.