This old house

Obviously, it's a blizzard here now,
but here's to thinking of warmer times in our backyard.
Or just plain more time.  

I'd like to say that we have a driveway. But we don't. We have a parking lot. And for those who count garage stalls, we have four.

When Bob searched for houses in Des Moines over five years ago, I was home sick in St. Paul. I was cooler than sick, I was radioactive sick, quarantined during my nuclear treatment for thyroid cancer. I like throwing in that N-word along with the C-word, because they sound so dramatic together. The reality was much less awesome. It involved a white world-spinning headache and ceramic-hugging vomit. The point though, for this story, is that I didn't get to help pick out our house.

When the good people at St. John's Lutheran Church in downtown Des Moines decided to interview Bob to be their associate pastor (an action that gave us more hope than you can ever, ever imagine, but that too is another story), Bob drove from St. Paul to Des Moines by himself to interview (driving four hours solo was in itself was a miracle because just a few months prior I had been spoon feeding him for loss of liver function, another story). The third time Bob interviewed at St. John's it was serious enough to warrant finding a house real quick. We would be moving from six years in student apartments to a full fledged house with a fully equipped yard.

My new house criteria was simple. I wanted an updated bathroom or two, a neighborhood with kids, and a specific school district. That's all.

The realtor was tricky. He was showing Bob houses while I was laying sick on a bed in a stark room rented in Stub Hall, a kind of monastic-style temporary housing option on the campus of Luther Seminary, my body absorbing that nasty radioactive pill. No TV, no radio, no pictures on the wall, just a bed and a little bathroom. I was there because I couldn't share a toilet with my kids during the radiation treatment. I didn't care about the lack of stimuli because I was so dang sick. I laid in bed fairly content to stare at the ceiling in quiet.

The realtor knew what information to withhold from me, and which information to showcase to me, even from afar. As I retreated peacefully in the blank four walls of that little dorm room, a picture text came to me on my old-style cell phone. It was from that sneaky house salesman who didn't send me an image of the very long driveway that would need plowing in the winter, nor the huge yard that would need mowing in the summer, nor the two garages that would fill up with stuff in the meantime, nor the extensive lower level man cave that would flood the following season, nor the back yard swimming pool which I have renamed our private vortex of time-suck and money-take. This house was pure Bob, and the realtor knew it. This house was enough to make up for Bob's 46 years of living in the urban core of Brooklyn, New York, where yards are postage stamps and parking spaces are the next place someone pulls out of that you are luck enough to notice after driving around the block a few times.

He sent me a picture of the kitchen island and nothing else. It worked. I forgot to ask about the bathrooms and everything else. I didn't think about those silly details of a house that you forget to ask about when you fall in love with just one aspect of it. All I could see was the elaborate dinner parties that we would host on that island.

Details aren't always helpful anyway. If you knew everything, you'd never do anything. It's easy to look back and play the coulda woulda game. Besides, if time is an indicator of love, then Bob has more than proven his adoration for this place. He is a one-man grounds keeper, pool-boy, and home remodel-er. Sadly, I am no help at all. When it comes down to it, I'm kind of a condo-style lady. Yet when our lot is full of cars, yard full of guests, pool full of kids, trees full of laughter, I can see Bob's vision of hospitality. That's what this is all about. It's for the times when we can surround ourselves in community, which is the best source of all healing. Second guessing decisions is easy, even when you know it could have been far worse. This makes no sense. It's harder to absorb everything around you and just let it be and enjoy. Which is what I'm about to do starting now. Breath, just breath. Be thankful, be alive. Be thankful to be alive. Starting now. Exactly right now. One, two, three go . . .

With love from yours truly,

Natural Born Bleeding Heart