Monitor Me

It has been five days since we moved from our rental townhouse into our house, our house that we own ourselves. We still have several unpacked boxes, and we're probably not done rearranging the furniture, but it feels like home. This is an amazing thing, this process of moving from one home to another. A home is a sacred space, only open to those who are a part of a specific circle of friends and family. I've lived in many many houses, and most of them have felt like home. When I stayed with Kaz in a hotel room for two weeks while he worked in a different city, there was no way to make it homelike, even though I attempted to settle in as much as possible. There is something in the combination of putting your belongings in their chosen place, and in the innate knowledge that this will be the place in which you dwell, your habitat, that makes a place feel like home.

But the people in it make it a home too. What is a homemaker, if not someone who makes it their responsibility to make a place feel as welcoming and full of love as possible. Homemaker. What a weird concept. What a marvelous concept. Kaz and I have enjoyed being homemakers over the last few days. We put aside our jobs for a few extra days to settle in. There are few things more taxing than trying to move an aquarium onto a rickety middle shelf, so we have had our moments of frustration. Dismantling both the office and master bedroom after our first night here to switch rooms was also not the most joy-filled morning of my life. But there has been more happiness than frustration, and although I wasn't quite as excited as a toddler at Christmas, moving day will be imprinted on my psyche as one of the big days of my life.

Our things seem to belong here too. I'm thrilled to find that my trunk finally has a home where it looks as if it belongs. The window ledges are all of the precise height that I can slide it beneath any window and it will fit like a glove, a remnant of a culture that built homes, not with dressers and bureaus in mind, but instead a good solid, and easily transportable, case. Of course, this means that our dressers and bureaus aren't exactly easy to fit in here, but that comes with the territory of an old home.

Some day down the road you may read a grouchy post about the exorbitant cost of replacing windows that are almost a hundred years old. Right now I am aglow and falling in love with our home.